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COMPENSATIONS. 17 

by auotlier hand, in wliicli the right to set aside this 
wish is much more certainly vested thau in mine. But I 
have thought that an earnest sympathy with the subject 
might sanction the present essay. Sympathy, after all, is 
the talisman which may preserve even the formal biog- 
rapher from giving that injury to his theme just spoken 
of. And if the insight which guides me has any worth, 
it will present whatever material has already been made 
public with a selection and shaping which all researchers 
might not have time to bestow. 

Still, I am quite alive to the difficulties of my task; 
and I am conscious that the work may to some appear 
supererogatory. Stricture and praise are, it will perhaps 
be said, equally impertinent to a fame so well established. 
Neither have I any rash hope of adding a single ray to 
the light of Hawthorne's high standing. But I do not 
fear the charge of presumption. Time, if not the present 
reader, will supply the right perspective and proportion. 

On the ground of critical duty there is surely defence 
enough for such an attempt as the one now offered ; the 
relative rank of Hawthorne, and othei- distinctions touch- 
ing him, seem to call for a fuller discussion than has been 
given them. I hope to prove, however, that my aim is 
in no wise a partisan one. Criticism is appreciative esti- 
mation. It is inevitable that the judgments of compe- 
tent and cultivated persons should flatly contradict each 
other, as well as those of incompetent persons ; and this 
whether they are coeval or of different dates. At the 
last, it is in many respects matter of simple individual 
impression; and there will always be persons of high in- 
telligence whom it will be impossible to make coincide 
with us entirely, touching even a single author. So that 
the best we can do is to set about giving rational expla- 
nation of our diverse admirations. Others will explain 



18 SPEECH AND SILENCE. 

theirs; and in this way, everytliing good having a <^ 
showing, taste finds it easier to become catholic. 

Wiioever reverences something has a meaning. Shall 
he not record it ? But there are two ways in which he 
may express himself, — through speech and through si- 
lence, — both of them sacred alike. Which of these we 
will use on any given occasion is a question much too 
subtile, too surely fraught with intuitions that cannot be 
formulated, to admit of arbitrary prescription. In pre- 
ferring, here, the form of speech, I feel that I have 
adopted only another kind of silence. 



II. 



SALEM. 




lET us now look more closely at the local settino". 



To understand Hawthorne's youth and his 
following development, we must at once trans- 
])ort ourselves into another period, and imagine a very 
different kind of life from the one we know best. It 
hardly occurs to readers, that an effort should be made 
to imagine the influences surrounding a man who has 
so recently passed away as Hawthorne. It was in 1864; 
that he died, — Httle more than a decade since. But he 
was born sixty years before, which places his boyhood 
and early youth in the first quarter of the century. The 
lapse since then has been a long one in its effects ; al- 
most portentously so. The alterations in manners, rela- 
tions, opportunities, have been great. Restless and rapid 
in their action, these changes have multiplied the mystery 
of distance a hundred-fold between us and that earlier 
time; so that there is really a considerable space to be 
traversed before we can stand in thought where Haw- 
thorne then stood in fact. Goldsmith says, in that pas- 
sage of the Life of Parnell which Irving so aptly quotes 
in his biograpiiy of the writer : " A poet while living is 
seldom an object sufficiently great to attract much atten- 



20 THE SALEM OF TO-DAY. 

tion When his fame is increased by time, it is 

then too late to investigate the peculiarities of his dispo- 
sition ; the dews of morning are past, and we vainly try 
to continue the chase by the meridian splendor." The 
bustle of American life certainly does away with " the 
dews of morning" very promptly ; and it is not quite a 
simple matter to reproduce the first growth of a life 
■which began almost with the century. But there are 
resources for doing so. To begin with, we shall view 
Salem as it is. Vigorous and thriving still, the place 
has fortunately not drifted so far from its moorings of 
seventy years since as to take us out of our bearings, in 
considering its present aspect. Pace its quiet thorough- 
fares awhile, and you will find them leading softly and 
easily into the past. 

You arrive in the ordinary way, by railroad, and at 
first the place wears a disappointingly commonplace as- 
pect. It does not seem impressively venerable; hacks 
and horse-cars rattle and tinkle along the streets, people 
go about their affairs in the usual way, without any due 
understanding that they ought to be picturesque and 
should devote themselves to falling into effective groups 
posed in vistas of historic events. Is antiquity, then, 
afraid to assert itself, even here in this stronghold, so 
far as to appear upon the street? No. But one must 
approach these old towns with reverence, to get at their 
secrets. They will not yield inspiration or meaning save 
to an imaginative effort. Under the influence of that, 
the faded past, traced in sympathetic ink, as it w'cre, re- 
vives and starts into distinctness. Passing down Essex 
Street, or striking off from its modest bustle a little 
way, we come upon shy, ungainly relics of other times. 
Gray gambrel-roofed houses stand out here and there, 
with thick-throated chimneys that seem to hold the whole 



TOWN ASPECTS. 21 

together. Again you pass buildings of a statelier cast, 
with carved pilasters on the front and arched doorways 
bordered with some simple, dainty line of carving ; old 
plaster-covered urns, perhaps, stand on the brick garden- 
wall, and the plaster is peeling off in flakes that hang 
long and reluctant before falling to the ground. There 
are quaint gardens everywhere, witli sometimes an en- 
trance arched with iron gracefully wrought by some 
forgotten colonial Quentin Matsys, and always with their 
paths bordered by prim and fragrant box, and grass that 
keeps rich and green in an Old World way, by virtue of 
some secret of growth caught from fresher centuries than 
ours. If your steps have the right magic in them, you 
will encounter presently one of the ancient pumps like to 
the Town Pump from Avhich Hawthorne drew that clear 
and sparkling little stream of revery and picture which 
has flowed into so manv and such distant nooks, thouo-h 
the pump itself has now disappeared, having been directly 
in the line of the railroad. But, best of all, by ascending 
Witch Hill you may get a good historic outlook over the 
past and the present of the place. Looking down from 
here you behold the ancient city spread before you, rich in 
chinmeys and overshadowed by soft elms. At one point 
a dark, strong steeple lifts itself like a huge gravestone 
above the surrounding houses, terminating in a square top 
or a blunt dome ; and yonder is another, more ideal in its 
look, rising slight and fine, and with many ascents and alter- 
nating pauses, to reach a delicate pinnacle at great height 
in the air. It is lighted at intervals with many-paned and 
ghttering windows, and wears a probable aspect of being 
the one which the young dreamer would have chosen for 
the standpoint of his "Sights from a Steeple"; and the 
two kinds of spire seem to typify well the Puritan gloom 
and the Puritan aspiration that alike found expression on 



2£ SUEEOrNDINGS. 

tliis soil. Off beyond the gray and sober-tinted town is 
the sea, which in this perspective seems to rise above it 
and to dominate the place with its dim, half-threatening 
blue ; as indeed it has always ruled its destinies in great 
measure, bringing first the persecuted hither and then 
inviting so many successive generations forth to war- 
like expedition, or lievolutionary privateering or distant 
commercial enterprise. With the sea, too, Hawthorne's 
name again is connected, as we shall presently notice. 
Then, quitting the brimming blue, our eyes return over 
the " flat, unvaried surface covered chiefly with wooden 
houses, few or none of which pretend to architectural 
beauty," with its " irregularity which is neither pictu- 
resque nor quaint, but only tame " ; and retracing the 
line upon which Hawtliorne has crowded the wliole his- 
tory of Salem, in " Main Street," * we fall to pondering 
upon the deeds that gave this hill its name. At its foot 
a number of tanneries and mills are grouped, from which 
there are exhalations of smoke and steam. Tlie mists of 
superstition tliat once overhung the spot seem at last to 
have taken on that form. Behind it tlie land opens out 
and falls away in a barren tract known from the earliest 
period as the Great Pastures, where a solitude reigns al- 
most as complete as that of the primitive settlement, and 
where, swinging cabalistic webs from one to another of the 
arbor-vitje and dwarf-pine trees that grow upon it, spiders 
enough still abide to furnish familiars for a world full of 
witches. But here on the hill there is no special sug- 
gestion of the dark memory that broods upon it when 
seen in history. An obliging Irish population has re- 
lieved the descendants of both the witches and their 
exterminators from an awkward task, by covering with 
their own barren little dwellings the three sides of the 

* See The Snow Image, and other Twice-Told Tales. 



WITCH HILL. 23 

lielf^lit fticing the town. Still, they have not ventured 
beyond a certahi line. One siiiall area at the summit is 
wholly uneucroached upon. Wliether or not through 
fear of some evil influence resting upon tlie spot, no 
house as yet disturbs this space, though the thin turf 
has been somewhat picked away by desultory sod-diggers. 
There is notliing save this squalid, lonely desolation to 
commemorate the fact that such unhappy and needless 
deaths were here endured. It is enough. Mere human 
sympathy takes us back with awful vividness to that 
time when the poor victims looked their last from this, 
upon the bleak boundary-hills of the inland horizon and 
that hopeless semicircle of the sea on the other side. 
A terrible and fitting place for execution, indeed I It 
looms up visible for many miles of lower country around ; 
and as you stand upon the top, earth seems to fall away 
with such a fatal ease around it ! 

The stranger is naturally drawn hence to the Court 
House, where, by calling a clerk from his routine in a 
room fairly lined and stuccoed with bundles of legal 
papers, he may get a glimpse of the famous " witch- 
pins." These are the identical little instruments which 
the afflicted children drew from different parts of their 
dress, in the trial-room, declaring that some one of the 
accused had just caused them to be sharply inserted into 
their persons. The pins are kept in a small glass bottle, 
and are thin and rudely made ; and as one looks at the 
curious, homely little relics, it is hard to know whether 
to laugh at the absurdly insignificant siglit, or shudder 
at the thought of what deadly harm they worked in the 
hands of the bewitched. So, while one is hesitating, 
one gives the bottle back to the clerk, who locks it up 
speedily, and at the next instant is absorbed in the draw- 
ing up of some document ; leaving the intruder free to 



24 A SKELETON CHURCH. 

pursue his search for antiquities elsewhere. But the 
moimments and remains of the past are nowhere large 
enough, in our American towns, to furnish the pilgrim a 
complete shelter and make an atmosphere of their own. 
The old Curwin Mansion, or "Witch House," to be sure, 
with its jutting upper story, and its dark and grimy room 
where witch-trials are rumored to have been held, is a 
solid scrap of antique gloom ; but an ephemeral drug- 
gist's shop has been fastened on to a corner of the old 
building, and clings there like a wasp's nest, — as sub- 
versive, too, of quiet contemplation. The descend- 
ants of the first settlers have with pious care preserved 
the remains of the Pirst Church of Salem, and the plain 
little temple may still be seen, though hidden away in 
the rear of the solid, brick -built Essex Institute. Yet, 
after all, it is only the skeleton of the thing, the origi- 
nal framework set into a modern covering for pro- 
tection, — the whole church being about as large as a 
small drawing-room only. Into this little space a few 
dumb and shrinking witnesses of the past have been 
huddled : the old communion-table, two ancient harp- 
sichords, a single pew-door, a wooden samp-mortar, 
and a huge, half-ruinous loom ; and some engraved 
portraits of ancient ministers hang upon the walls. 
When I visited the place, a party of young men and 
women were there, who hopelessly scattered any slight 
dust of revery that might have settled on me from 
the ancient beams, and sent the ghosts fleeing before 
their light laughter. The young women fingered the old 
harpsichords, and incontinently thrummed upon them ; 
and one cried, " Play a waltz ! " She was a pretty 
creature ; and, as her gay tone mingled with the rattle 
of protesting strings in the -worn-out instrument, one 
might easily have divined how dire a fu(e would have 



PAST AND PRESENT. 25 

been hers, in the days when men not only believed in 
bewitchment, bnt made it punisliable. Then a young 
man who had clung for guidance amid her spells to 
the little printed pamphlet that describes the church, 
read aloud from its pages, seriously : " ' Nowhere else 
in this land may one find so ancient and worshipful a 
shrine. Within these walls, silent with the remembered 
presence of Endicott, Skelton, Higginson, Roger Wil- 
liams, and their grave compeers, the very day seems 
haunted, and the sunshine falls but soberly in.' " 

" don't ! " besought the siren, again. " We 're not 
in a solemn state." 

And, wiiether it was the spell of her voice or not, I 
confess the sunshine did not seem to me either haunted 
or sober. 

Thus, all through Salem, you encounter a perverse fate 
which will not let you be alone with the elusive spirit of 
the past. Yet, on reflection, why should it ? This per- 
verse fate is simply the life of to-day, which has cer- 
tainly an equal right to the soil with that of our dreams 
and memories. And before long the conflict of past and 
present thus occasioned leads to a discovery. 

In the first place, it transpires tliat the atmosphere is 
more favorable than at first appears for backward-reach- 
ing revery. The town holds its history in reverence, and 
a good many slight traces of antiquity, with the quiet 
respect maintained for them in the minds of the inhabi- 
tants, finally make a strong cumulative attack on the 
imagination. The very meagreness and minuteness of 
the physical witnesses to a former condition of things 
cease to discourage, and actually become an incitement 
more eifective than bulkier relics might impart. The 
delicacy of suggestion lends a zest to your dream ; and the 
sober streets open out before you into vistas of austere 
2 



26 SHADOWS OF TIME. 

reminiscence. Tlie first niglit that I passed in Salem, I 
heard a church-bell ringing loudly, and asked what it 
was. It was the nine-o'clock bell ; and it had been 
appointed to ring thus every night, a hundred years ago 
or more. How it reverberaled through my mind, till 
every brain-cell seemed like the empty chamber of a van- 
ished year ! Then, in the room where I slept, there was 
rich and ponderous furniture of the fashion of eld; Ihe 
bed was draped and canopied with hangings that seemed 
full of spells and dreamery ; and there was a mirror, tall, 
and swung between slately mahogany posts spreading 
their feet out on the floor, which recalled that fancy 
of Hawthorne's, in the tale of "Old Esther Dudley," * 
about perished dames and grandees made to sweep in 
procession through " the inner world " of a glass. Such 
small matters as these engage the fancy, and lead it back 
through a systematic review of local history with un- 
looked-for nimbleness. Gradually the mind gets to rov- 
ing among scenes imaged as if by memory, and bearing 
some strangely intimate relation to the actual scenes 
before one. The drift of clouds, the sifting of sudden 
light from the sky, acquire the import of historic changes 
of adversity and prosperity. The spires of Salem, seen 
one day through a semi-shrouding rain, appeared to loom 
up through the mist of centuries ; and the real antiquity 
of sunlight shone out upon me, at other times, with 
cunning quietude, from the weather-worn wood of old, 
unpainted houses. Every hour was full of yesterdays. 
Something of primitive strangeness and adventure seemed 
to settle into my mood, and the air teemed with anticipa- 
tion of a startling event ; as if the deeds of the past weie 
continually on the eve of returning. With all this, too, 

* See also American Note-Books, Vol. T. ; and the first 
chapter of The House of the Seven Gables. 



EARLY SETTLEMENT. 27 

a certain gray shadow of unreality stole over every- 
thing. 

Then one becomes aware tliat this frame of mind, 
produced by actual contact with Salem, is subtly akin to 
the mood from which so many of Hawthorne's visions 
were projected. A flickering semblance, perhaps, of what 
to him must have been a constant though subdued and 
dreamy flame summoning him to potent incantation over 
the abyss of time ; but from this it was easy to conceive 
it deepened and intensified in him a hundred-fold. More- 
over, in his youth and growing-time, the influence itself 
was stronger, the suggestive aspect of the town more 
salient. If you read even now, on the ground itself, the 
story of the settlement and the first century's life of 
Salem and the surrounding places, a delicate suffusion of 
the marvellous will insensibly steal over the severe facts 
of the record, giving them a half-legendary color. This 
arises partly from tlie imaginative and symbolic way of 
looking at things of the founders themselves. 

John White, the English Puritan divine, who, with the 
"Dorchester Adventurers," established the first colony 
at Cape Ann, was moved to this by the wish to establish 
in Massachusetts Bay a resting-place for the fishermen 
who came over from Dorchester in England, so that they 
might be kept under religious influences. This Avas the 
origin of Salem ; for the emigrants moved, three years 
later, to this spot, then called Naumkeag. In the Indian 
name they afterward found a proof, as they supposed, 
that the Indians were an off^shoot of the Jews, because 
it "proves to be perfect Hebrew, being called Nahum 
Keike ; by interpretation, the bosom of consolation." 
Later, they named it Salem, " for the peace," as Cotton 
Mather says, " which they had and hoped in it " ; and 
when Hugh Peters on one occasion preached at Great 



28 SUPERSTITION. 

Pond, now Weuliam, he took as bis text, "At Enon, near 
to Salim, because there was much water there." This 
playing with names is a mere surface indication of the 
ever-present scriptural analogy which these men were 
constantly tracing in all their acts. Cut off by their 
intellectual asceticism from any exertion of the imagina- 
tion in literature, and denying themselves all that side 
of life which at once develops and rhythmically restrains 
the sense of earthly beauty, they compensated themselves 
by running parallels between their own mission and tliat 
of the apostles, — - a likeness which was interchangeable 
at pleasure with the fancied resemblance of their condi- 
tion to that of the Israelites. When one considers the 
remoteness of the field from their native shores, the 
enormous energy needful to collect the proper elements 
for a population, and to provide artificers with the means 
of work ; the almost impassable wildness of the woods ; 
the repeated leagues of hostile Indians ; the depletions by 
sickness ; and the internal dissensions with which they 
had to struggle, — one cannot wonder that they invested 
their own unsurpassed fortitude, and their genius for 
government and war, with the quality of a special Provi- 
dence. But their faith was inwoven in the most singular 
way with a treacherous strand of credulity and super- 
stition. Sometimes one is impressed with a sense that 
the prodigious force by which they subdued the knotty 
and forest-fettered land, and overcame so many other 
more dangerous difficulties, w^as the ecstasy of men made 
morbidly strong by excessive gloom and indifference to 
the present life. " When we are in our graves," wrote 
Higginson, " it will be all one whether we have lived 
in plenty or penury, whether we have died in a bed of 
downe or lockes of straw." And Hawthorne speaks of 
the Puritan temperament as "accomplishing so much. 



SALEM WITCHCEAFT. 29 

precisely because it imagined and hoped so little." Yet, 
tliougli they were not, as Wiiitlirop says, " of those that 
dreame of perfection in this world," they surely had vast 
hopes at heart, and the fire of repressed imagination 
played around them and before them as a vital and guid- 
ing gleam, of untold value to them, and using a myste- 
rious power in their affairs. Tiiey were something 
morbid in their imaginings, but that this morbid habit 
was a chief source of their power is a mistaken theory. 
It is true that their errors of imagination were so closely 
knit up with real insight, that they could not themselves 
.distinguish between the two. Their religious faith, their 
outlook into anotlier life, though tinged by unhealthy ter- 
rorism, was a solid, energetic act of imagination ; but 
when it had to deal with intricate tangles of mind and 
heart, it became credulity. That lurking unhealthiness 
spread from the centre, and soon overcame their judg- 
ment entirely. The bodeful glare of the witchcraft de- 
lusion makes this fearfully clear. Mr. Upham, in his 
" Salem Witchcraft," — one of the most vigorous, true, 
and thorough of American histories, without which no 
one can possess himself of the subject it treats, — ■ 
has shown conclusively the admirable character of tlie 
community in which that delusion broke out, its en- 
ergy, common-sense, and varied activity ; but he points 
out for us also the perilous state of the Puritan imagina- 
tion in a matter where religion, physiology, and affairs 
touched each other so closely as in the witchcraft epi- 
sode. The persecution at Salem did not come from such 
deep degeneration as has been assumed for its source, 
and it was not at the time at all a result of uncommon 
bigotry. In the persecution in England in 1645 - 46, 
Matthew Hopkins, the " witch-finder-general," procured 
the death, " in one year and in one county, of more than 



30 BEAUTY IN EVIL. 

tliree times as many as suffered in Salem during the 
wliole delusion"; several persons were tried by water 
ordeal, and drowned, in Suffolk, Essex, and Cambridge- 
shire, at the same time with the Salem executions ; and 
capital punishments took place there some years after the 
end of the trouble here. It is well known, also, that 
persons were put to death for witchcraft in two other 
American colonies. The excess in Salem was heightened 
by a well-planned imposture, but found quick sustenance 
because " the imagination, called necessarily into extraor- 
dinary action in the absence of scientific certainty, 
was .... exercised in vain attempts to discover, un- 
assisted by observation and experiment, the elements and 
first principles of nature,"* and "had reached a mon- 
strous growth," nourished by a copious literature of ma- 
gic and demonology, and by the opinions of the most 
eminent and humane preachers and poets. 

The imagination which makes beauty out of evil, and 
that which accumulates from it the utmost intensity of 
terror, are well exemplified in Milton and Bunyan. 
Doubtless Milton's richly cultured faith, clothed in lus- 
trous language as in princely silks that overhang his 
chain-mail of ample learning and argument, was as in- 
tense as the unlettered belief of Bunyan ; and perhaps he 
shared the prevalent opinions about witchcraft ; yet when 
he touches upon the superstitious element, the material 
used is so transfused with the pictorial and poetic qual- 
ity which Milton has distilled from the common belief, 
and then poured into this image of the common belief, 
that I am not sure he cared for any other quality in it. 

" Nor uglier follow the night-hag, when, call'd 
In secret, riding through the air she comes, 
Lured hy the smell of infant hlood, to dance 

* Uphfmi, I. 382. 



MILTON AND BUNYAN. 31 

With Lapland witches, while the laboring moon 
Eclipses at their charms." 

Paradise Lost, II. 662. 
Ag-aln, in Comus : — 

" Some say, no evil thing that walks by night, 
lilue meagre hag, or stubborn, unlaid ghost 
That breaks his magic chains at curfew time. 
No goblin, or swart faery of the mine. 
Hath hurtful power o'er true virginity." 

How near these passages come to Shakespere, where 
he touches the same string ! And is it not clear that 
both poets exulted so in the beauti/ born among dark, 
earthy depths of fear, that they would have rejected any 
and every horror which failed to contribute sometliing 
to the beautiful ? Indeed, it may easily be that such 
high spirits accept awful traditions and cruel theologies, 
merely because they possess a transmuting touch which 
gives tiiese things a secret and relative value not in- 
trinsically theirs ; because they find here something to 
satisfy an inward demand for immense expansions of 
thought, a desire for all sorts of proportioned and bal- 
anced extremes. This is no superficial suggestion, 
tliough it may seem so. But in such cases it is not 
the positive horror and its direct effect which attract 
the poet : a deeper symbolism and an effect both aesthetic 
and moral recommend the element to him. With Mil- 
ton, however, there follows a curious result. He pro- 
duces his manufactured myth of Sin and Death and his 
ludicrous Limbo of Vanity with a gravity and earnest- 
ness as convincing as those which urge liome any part 
of his theme ; yet we are aware that he is only making 
poetic pretence of belief; so that a certain distrust of his 
sincerity throughout creeps in, as we read. How much, 
we ask, is allegory in the poet's own estimation, and 



32 BUNYAN^S POWER. ^ 

Low much real belief ? Now in Buiiyan there is notliing 
of this doubt. Though the author declares his narrative 
to be the relation of a dream, the figment becomes abso- 
lute fact to us ; and the homely realism of Giant Despair 
gives him a firmer hold upon me as an actual existence, 
than all the splendid characterization of Milton's Beelze- 
bub can gain. Even Apollyon is more real. Milton as- 
sumes the historic air of the epic poet, Bunyan admits 
that he is giving an allegory ; yet of the two the humble 
recorder of Christian's progress seems the more worthy 
of credit. Something of this effect is doubtless due to art : 
the "Pilgrim's Progress" is more adequately couched 
in a single and consistent strain than the " Paradise Lost." 
Milton, by implying veracity and then vaporing off into 
allegory, challenges dispute ; but Bunyan, in humbly 
confessing himself a dreamer, disarms his reader and 
traps him into entire assent. Certainly Bunyan was 
not the greater artist : that supposition will not even 
bear a moment's contemplation ; but, as it happened, his 
M^eakness was his strength. He had but one chance. 
His work would have been nothing without allegory, 
and the simple device of the dream — "which is the refuge 
of a man unskilled in composition, who feels that his 
figures cannot quite stand as self-sufficient entities — 
happens to be as valuable to him as it was necessary; 
for the plea of unreality brings out, in the strong light 
of surprise, a contrast between the sincere substance of 
the story and its assumed insubstantiality. Milton had 
many chances, many resources of power to rely on ; but 
by grasping boldly at the effect of authenticity he loses 
that one among the several prizes within his reach. I 
do not know that I am right, but all this seems to me 
to argue a certain dividing and weakening influence ex- 
erted by the imagination which uses religious or super- 



RESULTING WEIRDNESS. 33 

stitious dread for tlie purposes of beauty; while tliat 
■which discourses confidently of the passage from this to 
another life, with all the several stages clearly marked, 
and floods the wiiole scene Avith a vivid and inartificial 
light from "the powers and terrors of what is yet un- 
seen," affects the mind with every atom of energy econo- 
mized and concentred. 

Leaving the literary question, we may bring this con- 
clusion to bear upon the Puritans and Salem, as their 
history affected Hawthorne. I have said tliat a gradual 
suffusion of tlie marvellous overspreads the comparatively 
arid annals of the town, if one reviews them amid the 
proper influences ; and I have touched upon the two 
phases of imagination which, playing over the facts, 
give them this atmosphere. Now if what I guess from 
the contrast between Milton and Bunyan be true, the 
lower kind of imagination — that is, imagination de- 
formed to credulity — would be likely to be the more 
impressive. This uncanny quality of superstition, then, 
is the one which insensibly exudes from the pages of 
New England's and perhaps especially of Salem's colo- 
nial history, as Hawthorne turns them. This is the 
dank effluence that, mingling with the sweeter and freer 
air of his own reveries, has made so many people shud- 
der on entering the great romancer's shadowy but se- 
rene domain. 

And just here it is advisable to triangulate our ground, i 
by bringing Milton, Bunyan, and Hawthorne together in 
a simultaneous view. Wide apart as the first two stand, 
they seem to effect a kind of union in this modern gen- 
ius ; or, rather, their influence here conjoins, as the rays 
from two far- separated stars meet in the eye of him who 
watches the heavens for inspiration. Something of the 
peculiar virtue of each of these Puritan writers seems to 
2* c 



34 MILTON, BUNYAN, HAWTHORNE. 

liave given tone to Hawthorne's no less individual na- 
ture. In Bunyan, wlio very early laid his hand ou 
Hawthorne's intellectual history, we find a very foun- 
tain-head of allegory. His impulse, of course, was su- 
premely didactic, only so much of mere narrative inter- 
est mixing itself with his work as was inseparable from 
his native relish for the matter of fact ; while in Milton's 
poetry the clear aesthetic pleasure held at least an exact 
balance with the moral inspiration, and, as we have just 
seen, perhaps outweighed it at times. The same pow- 
erful, unrelaxing grasp of allegory is found in the Amei-- 
ican genius as in Bunyan, and there likewise comes to 
light in his mind the same delight in art for art's sake 
tiiat added such a grace to Milton's sinewy and large- 
limbed port. In special cases the allegorical motive has 
distinctly got the upper hand, in Hawthorne's work; 
yet even in those the artistic integument, that marvel- 
lous verbal style, those exquisite fancies, are not absent : 
on the contrary, in the very instances where Hawthorne 
has most constantly and clearly held to the illustration 
of a single idea, and made his fiction fit itself most ab- 
solutely to the jewelled truth it holds, — in these very 
causes, I say, the command of his genius over literary 
resources is generally shown by an unusual splendor of 
means applied to the ideal end in view. It is here that, 
while resembling Bunyan, he is so unlike him. But 
more commonly we find in Hawthorne the two moods, 
the ethical and the sesthetic, exerted in full force si- 
multaneously ; and the result seems to be a perfection 
of unity. The opposing forces, like centripetal and cen- 
trifugal attractions, produce a finished sphere. And in 
this, again, though recalling Milton, he differs from him 
also. In Milton's epic the tendency is to alternate these 
moods ; and one works against the other. In short, the 



MILTON, BUNYAN, HAWTHORNE. 35 

two elder writers undergo a good deal of refinement 
and proportioning, before mixing their qualities in Haw- 
tliorne's veins. However great a controversialist Milton 
may be held, too, tlie very fact of his engaging in the 
particular discussions and in the manner he chose, while 
never to be deplored, may have something to do with 
the want of fusion of the different qualities present in 
his poetry. We may say, and doubtless it is so, that 
Hawthorne could never have written such magnificent 
pamphlets as the " Eikonoklastes," the "Apology," the 
" Tetrachordon " : 1 grant that his refinement, though 
bringing him something which Milton did not have, has 
cost him something else wdiich Milton possessed. But, for 
all that, the more deep-lying and inclusive truths which 
he constantly entertained, and which barred him from the 
temporary exertion of controversy, formed the sources of 
his completer harmony. There is a kind of analogy, too, 
between the omnipresence of Milton in his work, and 
that of Hawthorne in his. The great Puritan singer 
cannot create persons : his Satan is Milton himself in 
singing-robes, assuming for mere argument's and epic's 
sake that side of a debate which he does not believe, yet 
carrying it out in the most masterly way ; his angels and 
archangels are discriminated, but still they are not di- 
vested of his informing quality; and "Com us" and 
" Samson Agonistes," howsoever diverse, are illustrations 
of the athletic prime and the autumnal strength of the poet 
himself, rather than anywise dramatic evolutions of his 
themes. Bunyan, with much less faculty for any subtle 
discrimination of characters, also fails to give his persons 
individuality, though they stand very distinctly for a 
variety of traits : it is with Bunyan as if he had taken 
an average human being, and, separating his impulses, 
good and evil, had tried to make a new man or woman 



3G rUIlTHER ANALOGIES. 

out of each ; so that there is hardly Hfe-blood enough to 
go round among them. Milton's creatures are in a cer- 
tain way more vital, though less real. Bunyan's char- 
acters being traits, the other's are moods. Yet both 
groups seem to have been cast in a large, elemental 
mould. Now, Hawthorne is vastly more an adept than 
either Milton or Bunyan in keeping the creatures of his 
spirit separate, while maintaining amongst them the 
bond of a common nature ; but besides this bond they 
are joined by another, by something which continually 
brings us back to the author himself. It is like a family 
resemblance between widely separated relatives, which 
suggests in the most opposite quarters the original type 
of feature of some strong, far-back progenitor. These 
characters, with far more vivid presence and clear defi- 
nition than tliose of the other two writers, are at the 
same time based on large and elementary forces, like 
theirs. They are for the most part embodied moods, or 
emotions expanded to the stature of an entire human 
being, and made to endure unchanged for years together. 
Thus, while Hawthorne, as we shall see more fully fur- 
ther on, is essentially a dramatic genius, Bunyan a sim- 
ple allegorist, and Milton an odic poet of unparalleled 
strength, — who, taking dramatic and epic subjects and 
failing to fill them, makes us. blame not his size and 
shape, but the too minute intricacies of the theme, — 
there is still a sort of underground connection between all 
three. It is curious to note, further, the relation of Mil- 
ton's majestic and multitudinous speech, the chancellor- 
like stateliness of his wit, in prose, to Hawthorne's reso- 
nant periods, and dignity that is never weakened though 
admirably modified by humor. Altogether, if one could 
compound Bunyan and Milton, combine the realistic im- 
agination of the one with the other's passion for ideas. 



GHOSTLY HOUSES. 37 

pour the ebullient undulating prose style of the poet into 
the veins of the allegorist's fiinn, leather-jerkined English, 
and make a modern man and author of the whole, the re- 
sult would not be alien to Hawthorne. 

Yet that native love of historic murkiness and mossy 
tradition which we have been learning to associate with 
Salem would have to be present in this compound being, 
to make the likeness complete. And this, with the trains 
of revery and the cast of imagination which it must natu- 
rally breed, would be the one thing not easily supplied, 
for it is the predisposition which gives to all encircling 
qualities in Hawthorne their peculiar coloring and charm. 
That predisposition did not find its sustenance only in 
the atmosphere of sadness and mystery that hangs over 
the story of Salem ; bygone generations have left in the 
town a whole legacy of legend and shudder-rousing pas- 
sages of family tradition, with many well-supported tales 
of supernatural hauntings ; and it is worth while to 
notice how frequent and forcible a use Hawthorne makes 
of this enginery of local gossip and traditional horror, in 
preparing the way for some catastrophe that is to come, 
or in overshooting the mark with some exaggerated 
rumor which, by pretending to disbelieve it, he causes 
to have just the right effect upon the reader's mind. 
Some of the old houses that stand endwise to the street, 
looking askant at the passer, — especially if he is a stran- 
ger in town, — might be veritable treasuries of this sort 
of material. Gray, close-shuttered, and retiring, they 
liave not so much the look of death ; it is more that 
they are poor, widowed homes that have mournfully long 
outlived their lords. One would not have them perish; 
and yet there is something drearily sad about them. 
One almost feels that the present tenants must be in 
danger of being crowded out by ghosts, or at least that 



38 SALEM ODDITIES. 

they must encounter strange obstacles to living there. 
Are not their windows darkened by Ihc light of other 
days F An old mansion of brick or stone has more 
character of its own, and is less easily overshadowed 
by its own antiquity; but these impressible wooden 
abiding-places, that have managed to cling to the soil 
through so many generations, seem rife with the inspira- 
tions of mortality. They have a depressing influence, 
and must often mould the occupants and leave a pe- 
culiar impress on them. We are all odd enough in our 
way, whatever our origin or habitation ; but is it not 
possible that in a town of given size, placed under spe- 
cified conditions, there should be a greater proportion 
of oddities produced than in another dillerently circum- 
stanced ? Certainly, if this be so, it has its advantages 
as well as its drawbacks ; a stability of surrounding and 
of association, which perhaps all'ccts individuals in the 
extreme, is still a source of continuity in town char- 
acter. And Salem is certainly remarkable for strong, 
persistent, and yet unexhausted individuality, as a town, 
no less than for a peculiar dignity of character which 
has become a ])ronounecd trait in many of its chil- 
dren. But, on the other hand, it is fecund of eccen- 
tricities. Though many absorb the atmosphere of age 
to their great advantage, there must be other tem- 
peraments among the descendants of so unique and so 
impressionable a body of men as the early settlers of 
this region, Avhich \vould succumb to the awesome and 
depressing influences that also lurk in the air; and 
these may easily pass from piquant personality into 
mere errant grotesqueness, Whetlier from instinctive 
recognition of this or not, it has never seemed to 
me remarkable that people here should see appari- 
tions of themselves, and die within the year; it did 



now THESE IMPRESS ONE. 39 

not strike me as strange Avlien I was told of persons 
who had gone mad with no other cause than that of 
inherited insanity, — as if, having tried every species of 
sane activity for two or three hundred years, a family 
should take to madness from sheer disgust with the 
monotony of being healthy ; nor could any case of 
warped idiosyncrasy, or any account of half-maniacal 
genius be instanced that seemed at all out of keeping. 
One day I passed a house where a crazy man, of harm- 
less temper, habitually amused himself with sitting at a 
window near the ground, and entering into talk, from 
between the half-closed shutters, with any one on the 
sidewalk who would listen to him. Such a thing, to be 
sure, might easily be met with in twenty other places ; 
but here it seemed natural and fitting. It was not a 
preposterous thought, that any number of other men in 
the neighborhood might quietly drop into a similar vein 
of decrepitude, and also attempt to palm off their dis- 
jointed fancies upon the orderly foot-passengers. I 
do not by this mean to insinuate any excessive lean- 
ing toward mental derangement on the part of the in- 
habitants ; but it is as if the town, having lived long 
enough according to ordinary rules to be justified in 
sinking into superannuation, and yet not availing itself 
of the privilege, but on the contrary maintaining a life of 
great activity, had compensated itself in the persons 
of a few individuals. But when one has reached this 
mood, one remembers that it is all embodied in " The 
House of the Seven Gables." Though Hawthorne, in 
the Preface to that, romance, takes precautions against 
injuring local sentiment, by the assurance that he has 
not meant "to describe local manners, nor in any way 
to meddle with the characteristics of a community for 
whom he cherishes a proper respect and a natural re- 



40 TYPES IN THE SEVEN GABLES. 

gard," the book is not the less a genuine outgrowth of 
Salem, Perhaps the aspect under which Salem presents 
itself to me is tinged witli fancy, though Hawthorne in 
the same story has called it " a town noted for its frugal, 
discreet, well-ordered, and home-loving inliabitants, .... 
but in which, be it said, there are odder individuals, and 
now and then stranger occurrences, than one meets witli 
almost anywhere else." But it is certain that poor 
Hepzibah Pyncheon, and the pathetic Clifford, and quaint 
Uncle Yenner, are types which inevitably present them- 
selves as belonging pre-eminently to this place. Not less 
subtle is the connection with it of the old wizard Maule, 
and the manner of his death at the witchcraft epoch ; for 
it is hinted in the romance that old Colonel Pyncheon 
joined in denouncing the poor man, urged by designs on 
a piece of land owned by Maule ; and Mr. Upham's care- 
ful research has shown that various private ])iques w^ere 
undoubtedly mixed up in the witchcraft excitement, 
and swelled the list of accusations. Young Holgrave, 
the photographer, also, represents in a characteristic way 
the young life of the place, the germ that keeps it fresh, 
and even dreams at times of throwing off entirely the 
visible remains of the past. 

It may be mentioned, at this point, as a coincidence, 
even if not showing how Hawthorne insensibly drew 
together from a hundred nooks and crannies, and for- 
mulated and embodied his impressions of this his native 
place in " The House of the Seven Gables," that the 
name of Thomas Maule (the builder of the house, and 
son of the Matthew brought to his death by Colonel 
Pyncheon) appears in Pelt's " Annals of Salem " as that 
of a sympathizer with the Quakers, He was also author 
of a "book called " Truth Held Porth," published in 
1695; and of a later one, the title of which, "The 



NAMES IN THE ROMANCE. 41 

Mauler Mauled," shows that he had humor in him as 
well as pluck. He seems to have led a long career of 
independent opinion, not altogether in condbrt, how- 
ever, for in 1669 he was ordered to be whipped for 
saying that Mr. Higginson preached lies, and that his 
instruction was " the doctrine of devils " ; and his book 
of " Truth Held Forth," which contanied severe reflec- 
tions on the government for its treatment of the Quakers, 
was seized and suppressed. It is not improbable that 
at some time Hawthorne may have read of this per- 
son. At all events, he serves as a plausible sugges- 
tion of the Maule who so early in the romance utters 
his prophecy of ill against Colonel Pyncheou, that he 
" shall have blood to drink." 

Another minor coincidence, and yet proper to be 
noted, is that of the laboring-man Dixey, Avho appears 
in the opening of the story with some comments upon 
Aunt Hepzibah's scheme of the cent-shop, and only comes 
in once afterward, at the close, to touch upon the sub- 
ject in a different strain. At first, unseen, but overheard 
by Miss Pyncheon, he prophesies to a companion, " in 
a tone as if he were shaking his head," that the cent- 
shop Avill fail ; and when Clifford and Hepzibah drive 
off in their carriage, at the end, he remarks sagaciously, 
" Good business, — good business." It certainly is odd 
that this subordinate in the romance should find a coun- 
terpart in one William Dixy, appointed ensign of the 
Salem military company which John Plawthorne com- 
manded, in 1645. 

The name Pyncheon, also, on which the imaginary 
Colonel and Judge cast such a doubtful light, w^as a well- 
known name in old New England, and became the 
source of some annoyance to Hawthorne, after he had 
written the " Seven Gables " : but of this we shall hear 



42 THEIR ORIGIN. 

more, further on. It is enougli, now, to recall these 
coincidences. I do not suppose that lie searched ihe 
names out and founded his use of them upon some sug- 
gestion already connected with them ; indeed, he ex- 
pressly declared, when remonstrated with on his use of 
the Pyncheons, that he did not know of any person of 
that title connected with Salem history of that time ; 
but the circumstance of his uj^ing the other names is 
interesting as showing that many minute facts must have 
gone to make up the atmosphere of that half-historic and 
half-imaginative area whereon so many of his short tales 
and two of the romances were enacted, Maule and 
Dixey were very likely absorbed into his mind and for- 
gotten ; but suddenly when he chanced to need these 
characters for the " Seven Gables," they revived and 
took shape with something of the historic impress still 
upon them. That their very names should have been 
reproduced finds explanation in the statement once made 
by Hawthorne to a friend, that the most vexatious de- 
tail of romance-writing, to him, was the finding of suita- 
ble names for the dramatu personcB. Balzac used to 
look long among the shop-signs of Paris for the precise 
name needed by a preconceived character, and the abso- 
lute invention of such titles is doubtless very rare ; few 
fictionists are gifted with Dickens's fertility in the dis- 
covering of names bearing t he most forcible and occult 
relations to the fleshless owners of them. And it is 
interesting to find that Hawthorne — somewhat as Scott 
drew from the local repertory of his countrymen's nomen- 
clature — found many of his surnames among those of 
the settlers of New England. Hooper, Prynne, Pelt on, 
Dolliver, Hunnewell, and others belong specially to these 
and to their descendants. Roger Chillingworth, by the 
by, recalls the celebrated English divine and controver- 



VIEW OF THE PURITANS. 43 

sialist, William ; and Bishop Miles Coverdale's name has 
been transferred, in " Blitliedale," from the reign of Ed- 
ward VI. to the experimental era of Brook Earm. 

It has been urged as a singular deficiency of Haw- 
thorne's, that he could not glorify the moral strength 
and the sweeter qualities of the Puritans and of their 
lives. But there was nothing in the direction of his 
genius that called him to this. As well urge against 
him that he did not write philanthropic pamphlets, or 
give himself to the inditing of biographies of benevolent 
men, or compose fictions on the plan of Sir Charles 
Grandison, devoted to the illumination of praiseworthy 
characters. It is the same criticism which condemns 
Dickens for ridiculing certain preachers, and neglecting 
to provide the antidote in form of a model apostle, con- 
trasted in the same book. This is the criticism which 
would reduce all fiction to the pattern of the religious 
tract. Certain men have certain things before them to 
do ; they cannot devote a lifetime to proving in their 
published works that they appreciate the excellence of 
other things which they have no time and no supreme 
command to do. Nothing, then, is more unsafe, than 
to imply from their silence that they are deficient in 
particular phases of sympathy. The exposition of the 
merits of the New England founders has been stead- 
ily in progress from their own time to the present ; and 
they have found a worthy monument in the profound 
and detailed history of Palfrey. All the more reason, 
why the only man yet born who could fill the darker 
spaces of our early history with palpitating light of that 
wide-eyed truth and eternal human consciousness which 
cast their deep blaze through Hawthorne's books, should 
not forego his immortal privilege ! The eulogy is the 
least many-sided and perpetual of literary forms, and 



44 ITS SPECIAL VALUE. 

unless Hawthorne liad made himself the eulogist of the 
Puritans, he would still have had to turn to our gaze the 
wrongs that, for good or ill, were worked into the tissue 
of their infant state. Eut as it is, he has been able to 
suggest a profounder view than is permitted either to 
the race of historians or that of philosophers. It does 
not profess to be a satisfactory statement of the whole, 
nor is there the least ground for assuming that it does 
so. Its very absorption in certain phases constitutes its 
value, — a value unspeakably greater than that of any 
other presentation of the Puritan life, because it rests 
upon the insight of a poet who has sounded the darkest 
depths of human nature. Had Hawthorne passed mutely 
through life, these gloomy-grounded pictures of Puritan- 
ism might have faded from the air like the spectres of 
things seen in dazzling light, which flit vividly before the 
eye for a time, then vanish forever. 

But in order to his distinctive coloring, no distortion 
had to be practised ; and I do not see why Hawthorne 
should be reckoned to have had no sight for that Avhich 
he did not record. With his unique and penetrating 
touch he marked certain salient and solemn features 
which had sunk deep into his sensitive imagination, and 
then filled in the surface with his own profound dramatic 
emanations. But in his subtle and strong moral insight, 
his insatiable passion for truth, he surely represented his 
Puritan ancestry in the most wortliy and obviously sym- 
pathetic way. No New-Englander, moreover, with any 
depth of feeling in him, can be entirely wanting in rev- 
erence for the nobler traits of his stern forefathers, or in 
some sort of love for the whole body of which his own 
progenitors formed a group. Partly for his romantic 
purposes, and merely as an expedient of art, Hawthorne 
chose to treat this life at its most picturesque points ; 



A PROFOUND DEVICE. 45 

and to lieigbten the elements of terror wliicli lie found 
there was an aesthetic obligation with him. But there 
is even a subtler cause at work toward this end. The 
touches of assumed repugnance toward his Puritan fore- 
fathers, wliich appear here and there in his writings, are 
not only related to his ingrained shyness, which would 
be cautious of betraying his deeper and truer sentiment 
about them, but are the ensigns of a proper modesty in 
discoursing of his own race, his own family, as it were. 
He shields an actual veneration and a sort of personal 
attachment for tliose brave earlier generations under a 
harmless pretence that he does not think at all too 
tenderly of them. It is a device frequently and freely 
practised, and so characteristically American, and espe- 
cially Hawthornesque, that it should not have been over- 
looked for even a moment. By these means, too, he 
takes tlie attitude of admitting the ancestral errors, and 
tlirows himself into an understanding with those who 
look at New England and the Puritans merely from the 
outside. Here is a profound resort of art, to prepare a 
better reception for what he is about to present, by not 
seeming to insist on an open recognition from his readers 
of the reigning dignity and the noble qualities in the 
Puritan colony, which he himself, nevertheless, is always 
quietly conscious of. And in this way he really secures 
a broader truth, while reserving the pride of locality and 
race intact ; a broader truth, because to the world at 
large the most pronounced feature of the Puritans is their 
.austerity. 

But if other reason were wanted to account for his 
dwelling on the shadows and severities of the Puritans 
so intently, it might be found in his family history and 
its aspects to his brooding mind. His own genealogy 
was the gate which most nearly conducted him into the 



46 HAWTHORNE ANCESTRY. 

still and haunted fields of time which those brave but 
stern religious exiles peopled. 

The head of the American branch of the Hathorne, 
or Hawthorne family, was Major William Hathorne, of 
Wigcastle, Wilton, Wiltshire,* in England, a younger sou, 
who came to America with Winthrop and his company, 
by the Arbella, arriving in Salem Bay June 12, 1630. 
He probably went first to Dorchester, having grants of 
land there, and was made a freeman about 1634, and 
representative, or one of " the ten men," in 1635. Al- 
though a man of note, his name is not affixed to the ad- 
dress sent by Governor Winthrop and several others from 
Yarmouth, before sailing, to their brethren in the English 
Church ; but this is easily accounted for by the fact that 
Hathorne was a determined Separatist, while the major 
part of his fellow-pilgrims still clung to Episcopacy. In 
1636, Salem tendered him grants of land if he would 
remove hither, considering that "it was a pubhc ben- 
efit that he should become an inhabitant of that town." 
He removed accordingly, and, in 1638, he had additional 
lands granted to him " in consideration of his many 
employments for towne and countrie." Some of these 
lands were situated on a pleasant rising ground by the 
South River, then held to be the most desirable part of the 
town ; and a street running through that portion bears 
the name of Hathorne to this day. In 1645, he peti- 
tioned the General Court that he might be allowed, 
with others, to form a "company of adventurers" for 

* This name appears in the American Note-Boolcs (August 
22, 1837) as Wigcastle, Wigton. I cannot find any but the 
Scotch Wigton, and have substituted the Wilton of Wiltshire as 
being move probable. Memorials of the family exist in the ad- 
joining county of Somerset. {J. N. B., October, 1836.) 



COLOXEL HATHORNE. 47 

trading among the French ; and in the same year he was 
appointed captain of a military company, the first regu- 
lar troop organized in Salem to " advance the military 
art." From 1636 to 1643 he had been a representative 
of the people, from Dorchester and Salem ; and from 
1662 to 1679 he filled the higher office of an assistant. It 
was in 1667 that he was empowered to receive for the 
town a tax of twenty pounds of powder per ton for every 
foreign vessel over twenty tons trading to Salem and Mar- 
blehead, thus forestalling his famous descendant in sitting 
at the receipt of customs. Besides these various activi- 
ties, he officiated frequently as an attorney at law ; and 
in the Indian campaign of 1676, in Maine, he left no 
doubt of his efficiency as a military commander. He led 
a portion of the army of twelve hundred men which the 
colony had raised, and in September of this year he sur- 
prised four hundred Indians at Cocheco. Two hundred of 
these "were found to have been perfidious," and were 
sent to Boston, to be sold as slaves, after seven or eight 
had been put to death. A couple of weeks later. Captain 
Hathorne sent a despatch : " We catched an Indian 
Sagamore of Pegwackick and the gun of another; we 
found him in many lies, and so ordered him to be put to 
death, and the Cocheco Indians to be his executioners." 
There was some reason for this severity, for in crossing 
a river the English had been ambuscaded by the savages. 
The captain adds : " We have no bread these three 
days." This early ancestor was always prominent. He 
had been one of a committee in 1661, who reported con- 
cerning the "patent, laws, and privileges and duties to 
his Majesty" of the colonists, opposing all appeals to 
the crown as inconsistent with their charter, and main- 
tained the right of their government to defend itself 
against all attempts at overthrow. Two years later he 



48 PUBLIC SERVICES. 

was cliarged bj Charles's commissioners with seditious 
words, and apologized for certain "unadvised" expres- 
sions ; but the committee of 1G61 reported at a critical 
time, and it needed a good deal of stout-heartedness to 
make the declarations which it did; and on the whole 
William Hathorne may stand as a sturdy member of the 
community. He is perhaps the only man of the time 
who has left a special reputation for eloquence, Eliot 
speaks of him as " the most eloquent man of the Assem- 
bly, a friend of Winthrop, but often opposed to Endicott, 
wdio glided with the popular stream ; as reputable for 
his piety as for his political integrity." And Johnson, 
in his " Wonder-Workiug Providence," naming the chief 
props of the state, says : " Yet through the Lord's mercy 
we still retain among our Democracy the godly Captaine 
William Hathorn, whom the Lord hath indued with a 
quick apprehension, strong memory, and Rhetorick, vol- 
ubility of speech, which hath caused the people to make 
use of him often in Publick Service, especially when they 
have had to do with any foreign government." It is 
instructive to find what ground he took during the 
Quaker persecutions of 1657 to 1662. Endicott was a 
forward figure in that long-sustained horror ; and if Ha- 
thorne naturally gravitated to the other extreme from 
Endicott, he would be likely, one supposes, to have sym- 
pathized with the persecuted. The state was divided in 
sentiment during those years ; but James Cudworth 
wrote that " he that will not whip and lash, persecute, 
and punish men that differ in matters of religion, must 
not sit on the bench nor sustain any office in the com- 
monwealth." Cudworth himself was deposed ; and it 
happens that Hathorne's terms of service, as recorded, 
seem at first to leave a gap barely wide enough to in- 
clude this troublesome period. But, in fact, he resumed 



THE QUAKERS. 49 

power as a magistrate just in time to add at least one to 
tlie copious list of bloody and distinguishing atrocities 
that so disfigure New England history. 

Sewel relates * that " Anne Coleman and four of her 
friends were whipped through Salem, Boston, and Ded- 
ham by order of Wm. Hawthorn, who before he was 
a magistrate had opposed compulsion for conscience ; and 
when under the government of Cromwell it was proposed 
to make a law that none shall preach without license, he 
publicly said at Salem that if ever such a law took place 
in New England he should look upon it as one of the 
most abominable actions that were ever committed there, 
and that it would be as eminent a Token of God's having 
forsaken New England, as any could be." His famous 
descendant, alluding to this passage,f says that the ac- 
count of this incident " will last longer, it is to be feared, 
than any record of his better deeds, though these were 
many." Yet it should not be overlooked that Hathorne 
is the only one among the New England persecutors 
whom Sewel presents to us with any qualifying remark 
as to a previous more humane temper. Sole, too, in es- 
caping the doom of sudden death which the historian 
solemnly records in the cases of the rest. So that even 
if we had not the eminent example of Marcus Aurelius 
and Sir Thomas More, we might still infer from this 
that it is no less possible for the man of enlightened 
ability and culture, than for the ignorant bigot, to find 
himself, almost of necessity, a chief instrument of re- 
ligious coercion. Doubtless this energetic Puritan de- 
nouncer of persecution never conceived of a fanaticism 
like that of the Eriends, which should so systematically 

* History of the Quakers, I. 411, 412. 
t See " The Custom House," introductory to " The Scarlet 
Letter." 

3 D 



50 QUAKER PERSECUTION. 

outrage all liis deepest sense of decency, order, and 
piety, and — not content with banislinient — should lead 
its subjects to return and force their deaths, as it were, 
on the commonwealth; as if a "neighbor, under some 
mistaken zeal, were to repeatedly mix poison with our 
porridge, until his arrest and death should seem our 
only defence against murder. Perhaps he was even on 
the dissenting side, for a time, though there is no record 
of his saying, like one Edward Wharton of Salem, that 
the blood of the .Quakers was too heavy upon him, and 
he could not bear it. Wharton received twenty lashes 
for his sensitiveness, and was fined twenty pounds, and 
subjected to more torture afterward. But, whatever 
Hathorne's first feeling, after five years of disturbance, 
exasperation was added to the responsibility of taking 
office, and he persecuted. It is easy to see his various 
justifications, now ; yet one cannot wonder that his de- 
scendant was oppressed by the act. That he was so 
cannot be regretted, if only because of the authentic fact 
that his reading of Sewel inspired one of his most ex- 
quisite tales, " The Gentle Boy." 

William Hathorne, however, — whatever his taste in 
persecution, — makes his will peacefully and piously in 
1679-80: '■'Imprimis, I give my soul into the hands of 
Jesus Christ, in whom I hope to bind forevermore my 
body to the earth in hope of a glorious resurrection with 
liim, whom this vile body shall be made like unto his 
glorious body ; and for the estate God bath given me 
in this world .... I do dispose of as followeth." 
Then he bequeaths various sums of money to divers 
persons, followed by " all my housing and land, orchard 
and appurtenances lying in Salem," to his son John. 
Among other items, there is one devising his "farm at 
Groton" to " Gervice Holwyse my gr. ch. [grandchild] 



THE NEXT IN DESCENT. 51 

if he can come over and enjoy it," Here, by the way, 
is anotlier bit of coincidence for the curious. Gercase 
Hehvyse is the name of tlie young man who appears 
in " Lady Eleanor's Mantle," * bereft of reason by 
his love for the proud and fatal heroine of that tale.f 
Captain Hathorne must have been well advanced in 
years wdien he led his troops against the Indians at 
Cocheco in 1676 ; for it was only five years later that 
he disappeared from history and from this life forever. 

His son John inherited, together w^ith housing and 
land, a good deal of the first Hathorne's various energy 
and eminence. He was a freeman in 1677, represent- 
ative from 1683 to 1686, and assistant or counsellor, 
from 1684 to 1712, except the years of Andros's govern- 
ment. After the deposition of Andros, he was called 
to join Bradstreet's Council of Safety pending the ac- 
cession of William of Orange ; a magistrate for some 
years ; quartermaster of the Essex companies at first, 
and afterward, in 1696, the commander of Church's 

* Tvvice-Told Tales, Vol. II. 

t 111 the English Note-Books, May 20, 1854, will he found 
some facts connected with this name, unearthed by Mr. Haw- 
thorne himself. He there tells of the marriage of one Ge- 
vase Elwes, sou of Sir Gervase Elwes, Baronet of Stoke, in 
Suffolk. This Gervase died before his father ; his son died 
without issue ; and thus John Maggott Twining, gi'andson of 
the second Gervase through a daughter, came into the baronetcy. 
This Twining assumed the name of Elwes. " He was the 
famous miser, and must have had Hawthorne blood in him," 
says Mr. Hawthorne, " through his grandfather Gervase, whose 
mother was a Hawthorne." He then refers to William's devise, 
and says : " My ancestor calls him his nephew" The will says, 
" gr.,ch." ; and I suppose the mistake occurred through Mr. 
Hawthorne's not having that document at hand, for reference. 



52 THE WITCHCRAFT JUDGE. 

troops, wliom lie led against St. John. He attacked the v. 
enemy's fort there, but, findmg his force too weak, drew 
off, and embarked for Boston. As his father's captaincy 
had somehow developed into the dignity of major, so 
John found himself a colonel in 1711. But in 1717 he, 
too, died. And now there came a change in the for- . 
tunes of the Hathorne line. Colonel John, during his 
magistracy, had presided at the witchcraft trials, and had 
shown himself severe, bigoted, and unrelenting in his 
spirit toward the accused persons. Something of this 
may be seen in Upham's volumes. One woman was 
brought before him, whose husband has left a pathetic 
record of her suffering. " She was forced to stand with 
her arms stretched out. I requested that I might hold 
one of her hands, but it was declined me ; then she de- 
sired me to wipe the tears from her eyes, and the sweat 
from her face, which I did; then she desired that she 
might lean herself on me, saying she should faint. Jus- 
tice Hathorne repUed she had strength enough to tor- 
ment these persons, and she should have strength enough 
to stand. I repeating something against their cruel pro- 
ceedings, they commanded me to be silent, or else I 
should be turned out of the room." * It is not strange 
that this husl)and should have exclaimed, that God would 
take revengo upon his wife's persecutors ; and perhaps 
he was the very man whose curse was said to have fallen 
upon the justice's posterity. 

From this time, at all events, the family lost its com- 
manding position in Salem affairs. Justice Hathorne's 
son Joseph subsided into the quiet of farm-life. The only 
notable association with his name is, that he married 
Sarah Bowditch, a sister of the grandfather of the dis- 
tinguished mathematician, Nathaniel Bowditch. But it 

* Chandler's American Criminal Trials, I. p. 85. 



PEIVATEEESMAN DANIEL. 53 

is ill tlie beginning of the eighteenth century that the 
Hatliornes begin to appear as mariners. In the very 
year of the justice's death, one Captain Ebenezer Ha- 
thorne earned the gloomy celebrity attendant on bringing 
small-pox to Salem, in his brig just arrived from the 
Barbadoes. Possibly, Justice John may have died from 
this very infection ; and if so, the curse would seem to 
have worked with a peculiarly malign appropriateness, 
by making a member of liis own family the unwilling 
instrument of his end. By and by a Captain Benjamin 
Hathorne is cast away and drowned on the coast, with 
four other men. Perhaps it was his son, another Ben- 
jamin, who, in 1782, being one of the crew of an Ameri- 
can privateer, " The Chase," captured by the British, 
escaped from a prison-ship in the harbor of Charleston, 
S. C, with six comrades, one of whom was drowned. 
Thus, gradually, originated the traditional career of the 
nien of this family, — "a gray-headed shipmaster in 
each generation," as the often-quoted passage puts it, 
" retiring from the quarter-deck to the homestead, while 
a boy of fourteen took the hereditary place before the 
mast." But the most eminent among these hardy skip- 
pers is Daniel, the son of farmer Joseph, and grandfather 
of the author. 

Daniel Hathorne lived to be eighty-five, and expired 
only on April 18, 1796, eight years and a little more 
before his famous grandson came into the world. Some- 
thing of the old prowess revived in him, and being a 
stout seafarer, and by inheritance a lover of independence, 
he became commander of a privateer during our Revolu- 
tion ; indeed, it is said he commanded several. His guns 
have made no great noise in history, but their reverbera- 
tion lias left in the air a general tradition of his bravery. 
The only actual account of his achievements which I 



54s WAllLIKE BALLADEY. 

have met witli is the following hallad, written hy the 
surgeon of his ship, who was perhaps better able than 
any one else to gauge the valor of liis countryman and 
commander, by the amount of bloodshed on his piratical 
craft : — 

BRIG " FAIR AMERICAN " : DANIEL HATHORNE, 
COMMANDER. 

The twenty-second of August, hefore the close of day, 
All hands on board our privateer, we got hei- under weigh. 
"We kept tbe Eastern shore on hoard for forty leagues or more. 
When our departure took for sea, from the Isle of Mouhegan 
shore. 

Bold Hathorne was commander, a man of real worth. 
Old England's cruel tyranny induced him to go forth ; 
She with relentless fury was plundering all the coast. 
And thought because her strength was great, our glorious cause 
was lost. 

Now farewell to America, — farewell our friends and wives. 
We trust in Heaven's peculiar care, for to protect their lives. 
To prosper our intended cruise upon the raging main. 
And to preserve our dearest friends till we return again. 

The wind it being leading and bore us on our way. 

As far unto the Eastward as the Gulf of Elorida, 

When we fell in with a British ship hound homeward from the 

main ; 
We gave her two bow-chasers, and she returned the same. 

We hauled up our courses and prepared for fight ; 
The contest held four glasses,* until the dusk of night ; 
Then having sprung our mainmast, and had so large a sea. 
We dropped astern, and left our chase till the returning day. 

* The time consumed in the emptying of a half-hour glass four times, 
■ — two hours. 



DANIEL'S SEA-FIGHT. 55 

Next day we fished our mainmast, the ship still being nigh, 
All hands was for engaging, our chance once more to try ; 
But wind and sea being boisterous, our cannon would not bear; 
We thought it quite imprudent, and so we left her there. 

We cruised to the Eastward, near the coast of Portuigale : 
In longitude of twenty-seven we saw a lofty sail. 
We gave her chase, and soon perceived she was a Bristish scow 
Standing for fair America with troops for General Howe. 

Our captain did inspect her with glasses, and he said : — 
" My boys, she means to fight us, but be you not afraid ; 
All hands repair to quarters, see everything is clear ; 
We '11 give him a broadside, my boys, as soon as she comes near." 

She was prepared with nettings, and her men were well secured. 

And bore directly for us, and put us close on board, 

When the cannons roared like thunder, and the muskets fired 

amain ; 
But soon we were alongside, and grappled to her chain. 

And now the scene is altered, — the cannon ceased to roar ; 
We fought with swords and boarding-pikes one glass and some- 
thing more ; 
The British pride and glory no longer dared to stay. 
But cut the Yankee grappling, and quickly bore away. 

Our case was not so desperate, as plainly might appear. 
Yet sudden death did enter on board our privateer ; 
Mahany, Clew, and Clemmans, the valiant and the brave. 
Fell glorious in the contest, and met a watery grave ! 

Ten other men were wounded, among our warlike crew. 
With them our noble captain, to whom all praise is due. 
To him and all our officers let 's give a hearty cheer ! 
Success to fair America and our good privateer ! 



56 OLD SALEM TRADE. 

This ballad is as long as the cruise, and the rhythm 
of it seems to show that the writer had not quite got 
his sea-legs on, in boarding the poetic craft. Especially 
is he to be commiserated on that unliappy necessity to 
which the length of the verse compels him, of keeping 
" the Eastern shore on board for forty leagues/' in the 
first stanza ; but it was due to its historic and associative 
value to give it entire. 

Perhaps, after all, it was a shrewd insight that caused 
tlie Hathornes to take to the sea. Salem's greatest 
glory was destined for a term to lie in that direction. 
Many of these old New England seaports have magnifi- 
cent recollections of a commercial grandeur hardly to be 
guessed from their aspect to-day. Castine, Portsmouth, 
Wiscasset, Newburyport, and the rest, — tliey controlled 
the carrying of vast regions, and fortune's wheel whirled 
amid their wharves and warehouses with a merry and 
reassuring sound. Each town had its special trade, and 
kept the monopoly. Portsmouth and Newburyport ruled 
the trade with Martinique, Guadaloupe, and Porto Rico, 
sending out fish and bringing back sugar; Gloucester 
bargained with the West Indies for rum, and brought 
cofi'ee and dye-stuffs from Surinam ; Marblehead had the 
Bilboa business ; and Salem, most opulent of all, usurped 
the Sumatra, African, East Indian, Brazilian, and Cay- 
enne commerce. By these new avenues over the ocean 
many men brought home wealth that literally made prin- 
ces of them, and has left permanent traces in the solid 
and stately homes they built, still crowded with precious 
heirlooms, as well as iu the refinement nurtured therein, 
and the thrifty yet generous character they gave to the 
town. Among these successful merchants was Simon 
Eorrester, who married Natlianiel Hawthorne's great- 
aunt llachel, and died in 1817, leaving an immense 



MAULE'S MALEDICTION. 57 

property. Him Hawthorne speaks of in " The CustoiA 
House " ; alluding to " old King Derby, old Billy Gray, 
old Simon Forrester, and many another magnate of his 
day; whose powdered head, however, was scarcely in 
the tomb, before his mountain-pile of wealth began to 
dwindle." But Nathaniel's family neither helped to un- 
dermine the heap, nor accumulated a rival one. How- 
ever good the forecast that his immediate ancestors had 
made, as to the quickest and broadest road to wealth, 
they travelled long in the wake of success without ever 
winning it, themselves. The malediction that fell on 
Justice Hathorne's head might with some reason have 
been thought to still hang over his race, as Hawthorne 
suggests that its " dreary and unprosperous condition 
.... for many a long year back " would show. Indeed, 
the tradition of such a curse was kept alive in his family, 
and perhaps it had its share in developing that sadness 
and reticence which seem to have belonged to his 
father. 

It is plain from these circumstances how the idea of 
" The House of the Seven Gables " evolved itself from 
the history of his own family, with important differ- 
ences. The person who is cursed, in the romance, uses 
a special spite toward a single victim, in order to get 
hold of a property which he bequeaths to his own heirs. 
Thus a double, and treble wrong is done, and the notion 
of a curse working upon successive generations is sub- 
ordinate to the conception of the injury which a man en- 
tails to his own descendants by forcing on them a stately 
house founded upon a sin. The parallel of the Hathorne 
decline in fortune is carried out ; but it must be observed 
that the peculiar separateness and shyness, which doubt- 
less came to be in some degree a trait of all the Ha- 
thornes, is transferred in the book from the family of the 
3* 



58 RESEMBLANCE TO FACTS. 

accursed to that of Maule, the utterer of the evil proph- 
ecy. " As for Matthew Maule's posterity," says the 
romancer, " to all appearance they were a quiet, honest, 
well-meaning race of people " ; but " they were generally 
poverty-stricken ; always plebeian and obscure ; working 
with unsuccessful diligence at handicrafts ; laboring on 
the wharves, or following the sea as sailors before the 
mast " ; and " so long as any of the race were to be 
found, they had been marked out from other men — not 
strikingly, nor as with a sharp line, but with an effect 
that was felt, rather than spoken of — by an hereditary 
character of reserve. Their companions, or those who 
endeavored to become such, grew conscious of a circle 
round about the Maules, within the sanctity or the spell 
of which, in spite of an exterior of sufficient frankness 
and good-fellowship, it was impossible for any man to 
step." The points of resemblance here may be easily,,, 
distinguished. In the "American Note-Books "^oecurs" 
an anecdote which recalls the climax of the romance. It 
concerns Philip English, who had been tried for witch- 
craft by John Hathorne, and became his bitter enemy. 
On his (ieath-bed, he consented to forgive him ; "But if 
I get well," said he, " I '11 be damned if I forgive him ! " 
One of Euglish's daughters (he had no sons) afterward 
married a son of John Hathorne. How masterly is the 
touch of the artist's crayon in this imaginative creation, 
based upon the mental and moral anatomy of actual be- 
ings ! It is a delicate study of the true creative art to 
follow out this romantic shape, and contrast it with the 
real creatures and incidents to which it has a sort of 
likeness. With perfect choice, the artist selects, proba- 
bly not consciously, but through association, whatever he 
likes from the real, and deviates from it precisely where 
he feels this to be fitting ; adds a trait here, and transfers 



THE ROMANCEU'S RIGHT. 59 

another there ; and thus completes something having a 
unity and inspiration of its own, neither a simple repro- 
duction nor an unmixed invention, the most subtile and 
harmonious product of the creative power. It is in this 
way that " The House of the Seven Gables " comes to be 
not merely fancifully a romance typical of Salem, but in 
the most essentially true way representative of it. Surely 
no one could have better right to thus embody the char- 
acteristics of the town than Hawthorne, whose early 
ancestors had helped to magnify it and defend it, and 
whose nearer progenitors had in their fallen fortunes al- 
most foreshadowed the mercantile decline of the long- 
lived capital. Surely no one can be less open to criticism 
for illustrating various phases of his townsmen's character 
and exposing in this book, as elsewhere, though always 
mildly, the gloomier traits of the founders, than this deep- 
eyed and gentle man, whose forefathers notably possessed 
" all the Puritanic traits, both good and evil," and who 
uses what is as much to the disadvantage of his own 
blood as to that of others, with such absolute, aduiirable 
impartiality. 




III. 



BOYHOOD. — COLLEGE DAYS. — FANSH AWE. 




1804-1828. 

ITH sucli antecedents behind liim, and such as- 
sociations awaiting him, Nathaniel Hawthorne 
was born, Julj 4, 1804. 
His father, the captain of a trading-vessel, was one of 
three sons of the privateersman Daniel, and was born in 
177G ; so that both father and son, it happens, are asso- 
ciated by time of birth with the year and the day that 
American independence has made honorable and imme- 
morial. The elder Nathaniel Avore his surname in one 
of several fashions that his predecessors had provided, — 
for they had some eight different ways of writing, though 
presumably bul^ one of pronouncing it, — and called him- 
self Hathorne. It was not long after the birth of his 
only boy, second of his three children, however, that 
he left the name to this male successor, with whom it 
underwent a restoration to the more picturesque and 
flowered form of Hawthorne. Nathaniel, the son of 
Daniel, died in Surinam, in the spring of 1808, of a fever, 
it is thought, and left his widow stricken Avith a lifelong 
grief, his family suddenly overwhelmed with sorrow and 
solitude. I think I cannot convey the sadness of this 



EARLY SOEROW. 61 

more fully than by simply saying it. Yet sombre as the 
event is, it seems a fit overture to the opening life of this 
spirit so nobly sad whom we are about to study. The 
tradition seems to have become established that Captain 
Nathaniel was inclined to melancholy, and very reticent ; 
also, that though he was an admirable shipmaster, he had 
a vigorous appetite for reading, and carried many books 
with him on his loug vovages. Those who know the 
inheritances that come with the Puritan blood will easily 
understand the sort of dark, underlying deposit of unut- 
terable sadness that often reminds such persons of their 
austere ancestry ; but, in addition to this, the Hathonies 
had now firmly imbibed the belief that their family was 
under a retributive ban for its share in the awful severi- 
ties of the Quaker and the witchcraft periods. It was not 
to them the symbolic and picturesque thing that it is to 
us, but a real overhanging, intermittent oppressiveness, 
that must often have struck across their actions in a 
chilling and disastrous way. Their ingrained reticence 
was in itself, when contrasted with Major Hathorne's 
fame in oratory, a sort of corroboration of the idea that 
fate was making reprisals upon them. The captain's 
children felt this ; and the son, when grown to manhood, 
was said to greatly resemble his father in appearance, as 
well. Of the Endicotts, who also figured largely in the 
maritims history of Salem, it is told that in the West 
Indies the name grew so familiar as being that of the cap- 
tain of a vessel, that it became generic ; and when a new 
ship arrived, the natives would ask, "Who is the Eudi- 
cott ? " Very likely the Hathornes had as fixed a fame 
in the ports where they traded. At all events, some 
forty years after the captain's death at Surinam, a sailor 
one day stopped Mr. Surveyor Hawthorne on the steps 
of the Salem Custom House, and asked him if he had 



62 HAWTHORNE'S MOTHEE. 

not once a relative — an uncle or a father — who died 
in Surinam at the date given above. He had recognized 
him by his likeness to the father, of whom Nathaniel 
probably had no memory at all. 

But he inherited much from liis mother, too. She has 
been described by a gentleman who saw her in Maine, 
as very reserved, " a very pious woman, and a very mi- 
nute observer of religious festivals," of " feasts, fasts, 
new moons, and Sabbaths," and perhaps a little inclined 
to superstition. Such an influence as hers would inevi- 
tably foster in the son that strain of reverence, and that 
especial purity and holiness of thought, whicli pervade all 
that he has written. Those who knew her have said 
also, that the luminous, gray, magnificent eyes that so 
impressed people in Hawthorne were like hers. She 
had been Miss Elizabeth Clarke Manning, the daughter 
of Ricliard Manning, whose ancestors came to New Eng- 
land about 1680, and sister of Richard and of Robert Man- 
ning, a well-known pomologist of the same place. After 
•the death of her husband, this brother Robert came to 
her assistance, Captain Hathorne having left but little 
property: he was only thirty -two when he died. 

Nathaniel had been born in a solid, old-fashioned little 
house on Union Street, which very appropriately faced 
the old shipyard of the town in 1760 ; and it appears 
that in the year before his birth, the Custom House of 
that time had been removed to a spot "opposite the long 
brick building owned by W. S. Gray, and Benjamin H. 
Hathorne," — as if the future Surveyor's association with 
the revenue were already drawing nearer to him. The 
widow now moved with her little family to the house of 
her father, in Herbert Street, the next one eastward 
from Union. The land belonghig to this ran through 
to Union Street, adjoining the house they had left j and 



HIS HOME IN SALEM. 63 

from his top-floor study here, in later years, Hawthorne 
could look down on the less lofty roof under wliich he 
was born. The Herbert Street house, however, was 
spoken of as being on Union Street, and it is that one 
whicli is meant in a passage of the "American Note- 
Books " (October 25, 1838), which says, " In this dis- 
mal chamber fame was won," as likewise in the longer 
revery in the same volume, dated October 4, 1840. 

" Certainly," the sister of Hawthorne writes to me of 
him, "no man ever needed less a formal biography." 
But the earlier portion of his life, of which so little 
record has been made public, must needs bear so inter- 
esting a relation to his later career, that I shall examine 
it with as much care as 1 may. 

Yery few details of his early boyhood have been pre- 
served ; but these go to show that his individuality soon 
appeared. " He was a pleasant child, quite handsome, 
with golden curls," is almost the first news we have of 
him ; but his mastering sense of beauty soon made itself 
known. While quite a little fellow, he is reported to 
have said of a woman who was trying to be kind to 
him, " Take her away ! She is ugly and fat, and has 
a loud voice ! " When still a very young school-boy, 
he was fond of taking long walks entirely by himself; 
was seldom or never known to have a companion ; and 
in especial, haunted Legg's Hill, a place some miles from 
his home. The impression of his mother's loss and lone- 
liness must have taken deep and irremovable hold upon 
his heart ; the wide, bleak, uncomprehended fact that his 
father would never return, that he should never see him, 
seems to have sunk into his childish reveries like a caba- 
listic spell, turning thought and feeling and imagination 
toward mournful and mysterious things. Before he had 
passed from his mother's care to that of the schoolmaster. 



64 TRAITS OF CHILDHOOD. 

it is known that he would break out from the midst of 
childish broodings, and exclaim, " There, mother ! I 
is going away to sea, some time " ; then, with an omi- 
nous shaking of the head, " and I '11 never come back 
again ! " The same refrain lurked in his mind when, a 
little older, he would tell his sisters fantastic tales, and 
give them imaginary accounts of long journeys, which he 
should take in future, in the course of which he flew at 
will through the air ; on these occasions he always ended 
with the same hopeless prophecy of his failing to return. 
No doubt, also, there was a little spice of boyish mis- 
chief in this; and something of the ticlionist, for it ena- 
bled him to make a strong impression on his audience. 
He brought out the denouement in such a way as to 
seem — so one of those who heard him has written 
— to enjoin upon them "the advice to value him the 
more while he stayed with " them. This choice of the 
lugubrious, however, seems to have been native to him ; 
for almost before he could speak distinctly he is reported 
to have caught up certain lines of " Richard III." which 
he had heard read ; and his favorite among them, always 
declaimed on the most unexpected occasions and in his 
loudest tone, was, — 

" Stand back, my Lord, and let the coffin pass ! " 

Though he has nowhere made allusion to the distant 
and sudden death of his father, Hawthorne has men- 
tioned an uncle lost at sea, in the " English Notes," * — 
a startling passage. " If it is not known how and when 
a man dies," he says " it makes a gliost of him for many 
years thereafter, perhaps for centuries. King Arthiir is 
an example \ also the Emperor Erederic [Barbarossa] and 

* June 30, 1854. 



THE SHADOW OF DEATH. 65 

other famous men wlio were thought to be alive ages 
after their disappearance. So with private individuals. 
I had an uncle John, who went a voyage to sea about 
the beginning of the War of 1S12, and has never re- 
turned to this hour. But as long as his mother lived, as 
many as twenty years, she never gave up the hope of 
his return, and was constantly hearing stories of persons 
whose descriptions answered to his. Some people act- 
ually affirmed that they had seen him in various parts of 
the world. Thus, so far as her belief was concerned, he 
still walked the earth. And even to this day I never 
see his name, which is no very uncommon one, without 
thinking that this may be the lost uncle." At tlie time 
of that loss Hawthorne was but eight years old; he 
wrote this memorandum at fifty ; and all that time the 
early impression had remained intact, and the old semi- 
hallucination about the uncle's being still alive hung 
about his mind through fortv vears. When we chancre 
the case, and replace the uncle in whom he had no very 
distinct interest with the father whose decease had so 
overclouded his mother's life, and thwarted the deep 
yearnings of his own young heart, we may begin to 
guess the depth and persistence of the emotions which 
must have been awakened in him by this awful silence 
and absence of death, so early thrown across the track 
of his childish life. I conceive those lonely school-boy 
walks, overblown by shadow-freighting murmurs of the 
pine and accompanied by the far-off, muffled roll of the 
sea, to have been full of questionings too deep for words, 
too sacred for other companionship than that of unin- 
quisitive Nature ; — questionings not even shaped and 
articulated to his own inner sense. 

Yet, whatever half-created, formless world of profound 
and tender speculations and sad reflections the boy was 



66 FIGHTING AND PHILOSOPHY. 

moulding within himself, this did not master him. The 
seed, as time went on, came to miraculous issue ; but as 
yet the boy remained, healthily and for the most part 
happily, a boy still. A lady who, as a child, lived in a 
house which looked upon the garden of the widow's new 
abiding-place, used to see him at play there with his 
sisters, a graceful but sturdy little figure ; and a little 
incident of his school-days, at the same time that it 
shoM^s how soon he began to take a philosophical view 
of things, gives a hint of his physical powers. He was 
put to study under Dr. J. E. Worcester, the famous 
lexicographer, (who, on graduating at Yale, in 1811, had 
come to Salem and taken a school there for a few years ;) 
and it is told of him at this time, on the best authority, 
that he frequently came home with accounts of having 
fought with a comrade named John Knights. 

" But why do you fight with him so often ? " asked 
one of his sisters. 

" I can't help it," he said. " John Knights is a boy 
of very quarrelsome disposition." 

Something in the judicial, reproving tone of tlie reply 
seems to hint that Hawthorne had taken the measure of 
his rival, physically as well as mentally, and had found 
himself more than a match for the poor fellow. All that 
is known of his bodily strength in maturer boyhood aiid 
at college weighs on this side ; and Horatio Bridge,* his 
classmate and most intimate friend at Bowdoin College, 
tells me that, though remarkably calm-tempered, any 
suspicion of disrespect roused him into readiness to give 
the sort of punishment that his athletic frame warranted. 

But one of the most powerful influences acting on this 
liealthy, unsuspected, un-self-suspecting genius must have 

* See Prefatory Note to The Snow Image. 



FIRST READINGS. 67 

been that of books. The house in Herbert Street was 
well provided with them, and he was allowed to make 
free ciioice. His selection was seldom, if ever, ques- 
tioned ; and this was well, for he thus drew to himself 
the mysterious aliment on which his genius throve. 
Shakespere, Milton, Pope, and Thomson are mentioned 
among the first authors with whom he made acquaintance 
on first beginning to read; and "The Castle of Indo- 
lence " seems to have been one of his favorite poems 
while a boy. He is also known to have read, before 
fourteen, more or less of Rousseau's works, and to have 
gone through, with great diligence, the whole of " The 
Newgate Calendar," which latter selection excited a good 
deal of comment among his family and relatives, but no 
decisive opposition. A remark of his has come down 
from that time, that he cared " very little for the history 
of the world before the fourteenth century " ; and he 
had a judicious shyness of what was considered useful 
reading. Of the four poets there is of course but little 
trace in his works ; Rousseau, with his love of nature 
and impressive abundance of emotion, seems to stand 
more directly related to the future author's develop- 
ment, and "The Newgate Calendar" must have supplied 
him with the most weighty suggestions for those deep 
ponderings on sin and crime which almost from the first 
tiuged the pellucid current of his imagination. There is 
another book, however, early and familiarly known to 
him, which indisputably affected the bent of his genius 
in an important degree. This is Bunyan's "Pilgrim's 
Progress." 

Being a healthy boy, with strong out-of-door instincts 
planted in him by inheritance from his seafaring sire, it 
might have been that he would not have been brought 
so early to an intimacy with books, but for an accident 



68 LAMENESS. 

similar to that wliicli played a part in the boyhoods of 
Scott and Dickens. When he was nine years old he 
was struck on the foot by a ball, and made seriously 
lame. The earliest fragment of his writing now extant 
is a letter to his uncle Robert Manning, at that time 
in Raymond, Maine, written from Salem, December 9, 
1818. It announces that his foot is no better, and that 
a new doctor is to be sent for. " May be," the boy 

writes, " he will do me some good, for Dr. B has 

not, and I don't know as Dr. K will." He adds 

that it is now four weeks since he has been to school, 
" and I don't know but it will be four weeks longer." 
This weighing of possibilities, and this sense of the un- 
certain future, already quaintly show the disposition of 
the man he is to grow into; though the writing is as 
characterless as extreme youth, exaggerated distinctness, 
and copy-books could make it. The little invalid has 
not yet quite succumbed, however, for the same letter 
details that he has hopped out into the street once since 
his lameness began, and been " out in the office and had 
four cakes." But the trouble was destined to last much 
longer than even the young seer had projected his gaze. 
There was some threat of deformity, and it was not until 
lie was nearly twelve that he became quite well. Mean- 
time, his kind schoolmaster, Dr. Worcester (at whose 
sessions it may have been that Hawthorne read Enfield's 
" Speaker," the name of which had " a classical sound in 
his ears," long, long afterward, when he saw the author's 
tombstone in Liverpool), came to hear him his lessons at 
liome. The good pedagogue does not figure after this 
in Hawthorne's boyish history ; but a copy of Worces- 
ter's Dictionary still exists and is in present use, which 
bears in a tremulous writing on the fly-leaf the legend : 
*' Nathaniel Hawthorne, Esq., with the respects of J. E. 



PUSS AND BOOKS. 69 

Worcester." Tor a long time, in tlie worst of his lame- 
ness, the gentle boy was forced to lie prostrate, and 
choosing the floor for his couch, he would read there all 
day long. He was extremely fond of cats, — a taste which 
he kept through life; and during this illness, forced to 
odd resorts for amusement, he knitted a pair of stockings 
for the cat wlio reigned in the household at the time. 
When tired of reading, he diverted himself with con- 
structing houses of books for the same feline pet, build- 
iug walls for her to leap, and perhaps erecting triumphal 
arches for her to pass under. In tiiis period he must 
have taken a considerable range in literature, for his 
age ; and one would almost say that Nature, seeing so 
rare a spirit in a sound body that kept him sporting and 
away from reading, had devised a seemingly harsh plan 
of luring him into his proper element. 

It was more likely after this episode than before, that 
Bunyan took that hold upon him so fraught M^tli conse- 
quences. He went every Sunday to his grandmother 
Hathorne's, and every Sunday he would lay hands upon 
the book ; then, going to a particular three-cornered 
chair in a particular corner of the room, "he would 
read it by the hour, without once speaking." I have 
already suggested the relations of the three minds, Mil- 
ton, Bunyan, and Hawthorne. The more obvious effect 
of this reading is the allegorical turn which it gave the 
boy's thoughts, manifest in many of his shorter produc- 
tions while a young man ; the most curious and com- 
plete issue being that of "The Celestial Railroad," in 
the "Mosses," where Christian's pilgrimage is so detfly 
parodied in a railroad route to the heavenly goal. Full 
of keen satire, it does not, as it might at first seem, 
tend to diminish Bunyan's dignity, but inspires one with 
a novel sense of it, as one is made to gradually pierce 



70 PILGRIM'S PROGIIESS. 

the shams of certain modern cant. But a more profound 
consequence was the direction of Hawtliorne's expanding 
thought toward sin and its various and occult manifesta- 
tions. Imagine the impression upon a mind so fine, so 
exquisitely responsive, and so well prepared for grave 
revery as Hawthorne's, which a passage like the following 
would make. In his discourse with Talkative, Eaithful 
says : " A man may cry ont against sin, of policy ; but 
he cannot abhor it but by virtue of a godly antipathy. 
I have heard many cry out against sin in the pulpit, who 
can abide it well enough in tlie heart, house, and conver- 
sation." 

Here is almost the motive and the moral of " The 
Scarlet Letter." But Hawthorne refined npon it un- 
speakably, and probed many fathoms deeper, when he 
perceived that there might be motives far more complex 
than that of policy, a condition much more subtly coun- 
terfeiting the mien of goodness and spirituality. Talka- 
tive replies, " You lie at a catch, I perceive," — meaning 
that he is sophistical. " No, not I," says Faithful ; " I 
am only for setting things right." Did not this desire 
of settinfirtliinnrs ricrht stir ever afterward in Hawthorne's 
consciousness? It is not a little singular to trace in 
Bunyan two or three much more direct links with some 
of Hawthorne's work. When Christiana at the Palace 
Beautiful is sjiown one of the apples that Eve ate of, 
and Jacob's ladder with some angels ascending upon it, 
it incites one to turn to that marvellously complete " Vir- 
tuoso's Collection," * where Hawthorne has preserved 
Slielley's skylark and the steed Rosinante, with Hebe's 
cup and many another impalpable marvel, in the warden- 
ship of the Wandering Jew. So, too, when we read 

* Mosses from ftu Old Munse, Vol. II. 



ITS INTIMATE INFLUENCE. 71 

Great-Heart's analysis of Mr. Fearing, this expression, 
" lie liad, I think, a Slough of Despond in his mind, a 
slough that he carried everywhere with him," we can 
detect the root of symbolical conceptions like that of 
" The Bosom Serpent. " * I cannot refrain from copy- 
ing here some passages from this same portion which 
recall in an exceptional way some of the traits of Haw- 
thorne, enough, at least, to have given them a partially 
prophetic power over his character. Mr. Great-Heart 
says of Mr. Fearing : " He desired much to be alone ; 
yet he always loved good talk, and often would get 
behind, the screen to hear it." (So Hawthorne screened 
himself behind liis genial reserve.) " He also loved 
much to see ancient things, and to be pondering them 
in his mind." What follows is not so strictly analogous 
throughout. Mr. Honest asks Great-Heart why so good 
a man as Fearing " should be all his days so much in 
the dark." And he answers, "There are two sorts 
of reasons for it. One is, the wise God will have it so : 
some must pipe, and some must weep. .... And for 
my part, I care not at all for that profession which 
begins not in heaviness of mind. The first string that 
the musician usually touches is the bass, when he intends 
to put all in tune. God also plays upon this string 
first, when he sets the soul in tune for himself. Only 
there was the imperfection of Mr. Fearing ; he could 
play upon no other music but this, till towards his latter 
end." Let the reader by no means imagine a moral 
comparison between Hawthorne and Bunyan's Mr. Fear- 
ing. The latter, as his creator says, " was a good man, 
though much down in spirit " ; and Hawthorne, eminent 
in uprightness, was also overcast by a behest to look for 

* Mosses from an Old Manse, Vol. II. 



7^ MASTER FEARING. 

tlie most part at tlie darker phases of human thinking 
and feeling ; yet there could not have been the slightest 
real similarity between him and the excellent but weak- 
kneed Mr. Pearing, whose life is made lieavy by the 
doubt of his inheritance in tlie next world. Still, though 
the causes differ, it could be said of Hawthorne, as of 
Master Fearing, " Difficulties, lions, or Vanity Fair, he 
feared not at all; it was only sin, death, and hell that 
were to him a terror." I mean merely that Hawthorne 
may have found in this character-sketch — Bunyan's most 
elaborate one, for the typical subject of which he shows 
an evident fondness and leniency — something peculiarly 
fascinating, which may not have been without its shaping 
influence for him. But the mtimate, afl'ectionate, and 
lasting relation between Bunyan's allegory and our ro- 
mancer is something to be perfectly assured of. The 
affinity at once suggests itself, and there are allusions in 
the " Note-Books " and the works of Hawthorne which 
recall and sustain it. So late as 1854^ he notes that 
"an American would never understand the passage in 
Bunyan about Christian and Hopeful going astray along 
a by-path into the grounds of Giant Despair, from 
there being no stiles and by-paths in our country.'* 
Rarely, too, as Hawthorne quotes from or alludes to 
other authors, there is a reference to Bunyan in " The 
Blithedale Romance," and several are found in " The Scar- 
let Letter " : it is in that romance that the most powerful 
suggestion of kinship between the two imaginations oc- 
curs. After Mr. Dimmesdale's interview with Hester, 
in the wood, he sufi*ers the most freakish temptations to 
various blasphemy on returning to the town : he meets 
a deacon, and desires to utter evil suggestions concern- 
ing the communion-supper ; then a pious and exemplary 
old dame, fortunately deaf, into whose ear a mad impulse 



A PARALLEL. 73 

urges liim to whisper what then seemed to liim an 
" unanswerable argument against the iminortalitj of the 
soul," and after muttering some incoherent words, he 
sees " an expression of divine gratitude and ecstasy 
that seemed like the shine of the celedial city on her 
face." Then comes the most frightful temptation of all, 
as he sees approaching him a maiden newly won into 
his flock. " She was fair and pure as a lily tiiat had 
bloomed in Paradise. The minister knew well that he 
himself was enshrined within the stainless sanctity of her 
heart, which hung its snowy curtains about his image, 
imparting to religion the warmth of love, and to love a 
religious purity. Satan, that afternoon, had surely led 
the poor young girl away from her mother's side, and 
thrown her into the pathway of this sorely tempted, or — • 
shall we not rather say ? — ■ this lost and desperate man. 
As she drew nigh, the arch-fiend whispered to him to 
condense into small compass and drop into her tender 
bosom a germ of evil that would be sure to blossom 
darkly soon, and bear black fruit betimes." Now, in 
the Valley of the Shadow of Daath, " poor Christian was 
so confounded, that he did not know his own voice. . . . 
Just when he was come over against the mouth of the 
burning pit, one of the wicked ones got behind liim 
and stepped up softly to him, and, whisperingly, sug- 
gested many grievous blasphemies to him, which he verily 
thought had proceeded from his own mind." I need not 
enlarge upon the similar drift of these two extracts ; still 
less mark the matured, detailed, and vividly human and 
dramatic superiority of Hawthorne's use of the element 
common to both. 

For other reading in early boyhood he had Spenser 
(it is said that the first book which he bought with his 
own money was " The Faery Queen," for which he kept 
4 



74 OTHER LITERATURE. 

a fondness all liis life), Froissart's "Chronicles," and 
Clarendon's " History of the Rebellion." The incident 
of Dr. Johnson's penance in Uttoxeter Market dwelt so 
intimately in Hawthorne's mind (he has treated it in the 
"True Stories," and touches very tenderly upon it in 
"Our Old Home,"* where he says that he "has always 
been profoundly impressed " by it), that I fancy a child- 
ish impression must have endeared it to him ; and Bos- 
well may have been one of his acquisitions at this time. 
Perhaps Dr. Worcester made the book known to him ; 
and he would not be at a loss to find endless entertain- 
ment there. 

It "was in November, 1813, that the accident at ball 
disabled him. In June of the same year an event had 
taken place which must have entered strongly into his 
heart, as into that of many another Salem boy. Young 
Lawrence, of the American navy, — who had won honors 
for himself at Tripoli and in the then prevailing war 
■with Great Britain, — had just been promoted, for gallant 
achievements oft' the coast of Brazil, to a captaincy, and 
put in command of the frigate " Chesapeake," at Boston. 
A British frigate, the " Shannon," had been cruising for 
some time in the neighborliood, seeking an encounter 
with the " Chesapeake," and the valiant Lawrence felt 
compelled to go out and meet her, though he had only 
just assumed command, had had no time to discipline his 
crew (some of whom were disaflected), and was whhout 
the proper complement of commissioned officers. Ameri- 
cans know the result ; how the " Chesapeake " was shat- 
tered and taken in a fifteen minutes' fight off Marblehead, 
and how Lawrence fell M'ith a mortal wound, uttering those 
nnforgotten words, " Don't give up the ship." The bat- 
tle was watched by crowds of people from Salem, who 
swarmed upon the hillsides to get a glimpse of the result. 



THE WAE OF 1812. 75 

When tlie details at last reached the town, many days 
afterward, Captain George Crowniushield fitted out a flag 
of truce, sailed for Halifax with ten shipmasters on board, 
and obtained the bodies of Lawrence and his lieutenant, 
Ludlow. Late in August they returned, and the city 
gave itself to solemnities in honor of the lost heroes, with 
the martial dignity of processions and the sorrowing 
sound of dirges. Cannon reverberated around them, 
and flags drooped above them at half-mast, shorn of 
their splendor. Joseph Story delivered an eloquent ora- 
tion over them, and there was mourning in the hearts of 
every one, mixed with tiiat spiritualized sense of national 
grandeur and human worth that comes at hours like this. 
Among the throngs upon the streets that day must have 
stood the boy Nathaniel Hawthorne ; not too young to 
understand, and imbibing from this spectacle, as from 
many other sources, that profound love of country, that 
ingrained, ineradicable American quality, which marked 
his whole maturity. 

I have not found any distinct corroboration of the 
report that Nathaniel again lost the use of his limbs, 
before going to Maine to live. Li another brief, boyish 
letter dated "Salem, Monday, July 21, 1818" (all these 
documents are short, and allude to the writer's inabil- 
ity to find anything more to say), he speaks of want- 
ing to " go to dancing-school a little longer " before re- 
moving with his mother to the house which his uncle is 
building at Raymond. He has also, he says, been to Na- 
hant, which he likes, because " fish are very thick there " ; 
both items seeming to show a proper degree of activity. 
There has been a tendency among persons who have 
found nothing to obstruct the play of their fancies, to 
establish a notion of almost ill-balanced mental precocity 
iu this powerful young genius, who seems to have ad-- 



76 HE GOES TO MAINE. 

vanced as well in muscular as iu intellectual develop- 
ment. 

It was in October, 1818, tliat Mrs. Hathorne carried 
lier family to Raymond, to occupy the new house, a 
dwelling so ambitious, gauged by the primitive commu- 
nity thereabouts, that it gained the title of " Manning's 
Tolly." llaymond is in Cumberland Countj, a little east 
of Sebago Lake, and the house, which is still standing, 
mossy and dismantled, is near what has since been called 
E-adoux's Mills. Though built by Kobert Manning, it 
was purchased afterward by his brother Richard,- whose 
widow married Mr. Radoux, the owner of these mills. 
Richard Manning's will provided for the establishing of 
a meeting-house in the neighborhood, and his widow 
transformed the Folly into a Tabernacle ; but, the com- 
munity ceasing to use it after a few years, it has re- 
mained untenanted and decaying ever since, enjoying 
now the fame of being haunted. Lonely as was the 
region then, it perhaps had a more lively aspect than at 
present. A clearing probably gave the inmates of the 
If oily a clear sweep of vision to the lake ; and to the 
northwest, beyond the open fields that still lie there, 
frown dark pine slopes, ranging and rising away into 
"forest-crowned hills ; while in the far distance every hue 
of rock and tree, of field and grove, melts into the soft 
blue of Mount Washington." This weird and woodsy 
ground of Cumberland became the nurturing soil of 
Hawthorne for some years. He stayed only one twelve- 
month at Sebago Lake, returning to Salem after that for 
college preparation. But Brunswick, where his academic 
years were passed, lies less than thirty miles from the 
home in the woods, and within the same county : doubt- 
less, also, he spent some of his summer vacations at Ray- 
miond. The brooding spell of his mother's sorrow was 



THE WORTH OF WIDOAVHOOD. 77 

perhaps even deepened in this favorable solitude. I 
know not whether the faith of women's hearts really 
finds an easier avenue to such consecration as this of Mrs. 
Hathorne's, in Salem, than elsewhere. I happen lately to 
have heard of a widoAV in that same neighborhood who 
has remained bereaved and uncomforted for more than 
seventeen years. "With pathetic energy she spends the 
long days of summer, in long, incessant walks, sor- 
row-pursued, away from the dwellings of men. But, 
however this be, I think this divine and pure devotion 
to a first love, though it may have impregnated Haw- 
thorne's mind too keenly with the mournfulness of mor- 
tality, was yet one of the most cogent means of entirely 
clarifying the fine spirit which he inherited, and that he 
in part owes to this exquisite example his marvellous, 
unsurpassed spirituality. A woman thus true to her 
highest experience and her purest memories, by living in 
a sacred communion with the dead, annihilates time and 
is already set in an atmosphere of eternity. Ah, strong 
and simple soul that knew not how to hide your grief 
under specious self-comfortings and maxims of conven- 
ience, and so bowed in lifelong prostration before the 
knowledge of your first, unsullied love, be sure the world 
will sooner or later know how much it owes to such as 
you ! 

More than once has Nathaniel Hawthorne touched the 
d3licate fibres of the heart that thrill again in this me- 
morial g- ief of his mother's ; and, incongruous as is the 
connection of the following passage out of one of the 
Twice-Told Tales, it is not hard to trace the origin of 
the sensibility and insight which prompted it : " It is 
more probably the fact," so it runs, " that while men are 
able to reflect upon their lost companions as remembran- 
ces apart from themselves, women, on the other hand. 



78^ SPIRITUAL GROWTH. 

are conscious that a portion of their being has gone with 
the departed, whithersoever he has gone!^ * But the 
most perfect example of his sympathy witli this sorrow 
of widowliood is that brief, concentrated, and seemingly 
slight tale, " The Wives of the Dead," f than which I 
know of nothing more touching and true, more exquis- 
itely proportioned and dramatically wrought out among 
all English tales of the same scope and length. It pic- 
tures the emotions of " two young and comely women," 
the " recent brides of two brothers, a sailor and a lands- 
man ; and two successive days had brought tidings of 
the death of each, by the chances of Canadian warfare 
and the tempestuous Atlantic." The action occupies the 
night after the news, and turns upon the fact that each 
sister is roused, unknown to the other, at different hours, 
to be told that the report about her husband is false. 
One cannot give its beauty without the whole, more than 
one can separate the dewdrop from the morning-glory 
without losing the effect they make together. It is a 
complete presentment, in little, of all that dwells in wid- 
owhood. One sentence I may remind the reader of, 
nevertheless : " Her face was turned partly inward to 
the pillow, and had been hidden there to weep ; but a 
look of motionless contentment was now visible upon it, 
as if her heart, like a deep lake, had grown calm because 
its dead had sunk down so far within it." Even as his 
widowed mother's face looked, to the true-souled boy, 
when they dwelt there together in the forest of pines, 
beside the placid lake ! 

Yet clear and searching as must then have been his 
perceptions, he had not always formulated them or 



* " Chippings with a Chisel," in Vol, II. of the Twice-Told 
Talcs. 

t See The Snow Image, and other Twice-Told Talcs. 



OUTDOOR LIFE. 79 

made them his cliief concern. On May 16, 1819 (the 
first spring after coming to the hew abode), he writes to 
his uncle Robert that " we are all very well " ; and 
" the grass and some of the trees look very green, the 
roads are very good, there is no snow on Lyiniiigton 
mountains. The fences are all finished, and the garden 

is laid out and planted I have shot a partridge and 

a henhawk, and caught eighteen large trout out of our 
brooke. I am sorry you intend to send me to school 
again." Happy boy ! he thinks he has found his voca- 
tion : it is, to shoot henliawks and catch trout. But 
his uncle, fortunately, is otherwise minded, though Na- 
thaniel writes, in the same note : " Mother says she can 
hardly spare me." The sway of outdoor life must have 
been very strong over this stalwart boy's temperament. 
One who saw a great deal of him has related how in the 
very last year of his life Hawthorne reverted with fond- 
ness, perhaps with something of a sick and sinking man's 
longing for youthful scenes, to these early days at Sebago 
Lake ; " Though it was there," he confessed, " I first got 
my cursed habits of solitude." " ' I lived in Maine,' he 
said, ' like a bird of the air, so perfect was the freedom 
I enjoyed.' During the moonlight nights of winter he 
would skate until midnight all alone upon Sebago Lake, 
with the deep shadows of the icy hills on either hand. 
When he found himself far away from his home and 
weary with the exercise of skating, he would sometimes 
take refuge in a log-cabin, where half a tree would be 
burning on the broad hearth. He would sit in the am- 
ple chimney, and look at the stars through the great 
aperture through which the flames went roaring up. 
'Ah,' he said, 'how well I recall the summer days, also, 
"when with my gun I roamed at will through the woods 
of Maine ! . . . . Everything is beautiful in youth, for all 



80 DECISIONS OF GENIUS. 

tilings are allowed to it then ! " The same writer men- 
tions the author's passion for the sea, telling how, on the 
return from England in 1860, Hawthorne M'as constantly 
saying in his quiet, earnest way : " I should like to sail 
on and on forever, and never toueh the shore again." 
I have it from his sister that he used to declare that, had 
he not been sent to college, he should have become a 
mariner, like his predecessors, rkideed, he had the fresh 
air and the salt spray in his blood./ 

Still it is difficult to believe "that by any chance he 
could have missed carrying out his inborn disposition 
toward literature. After we have explained all the fos- 
tering influences and formative forces that surround and 
stamp a genius of this sort, we come at last to the in- 
explicable mystery of that interior impulse which, if it 
does not find the right influences at fii'st, presses forth, 
breaks out to right and left and keeps on pushing, until 
it feels itself at ease. It cannot wholly make its own in- 
fluences, but it fights to the death before it will give up 
the eff'ort to lay itself open to these ; that is, to get into 
a proper surrounding. The surrounding may be as far 
as possible from what we should prescribe as the fit one ; 
but the being in whom perception and receptivity exist 
in that active state Avhich we call genius will adapt itself, 
and will instinctively discern whether the conditions of 
life around it can yield a bare nourishment, or whether it 
must seek other and more fertile conditions. Hawthorne 
liad an ancestry behind him connected with a singular 
and impressive history, had remarkable parents, and espe- 
cially a mother pure and lofty in spirit; lived in a sug- 
gestive atmosphere of ])rivatc sorrow and amid a com- 
munity of much quaintness ; he was also enabled to know 
books at an early age ; yet these things only helped, and 
not produced, his genius. Sometimes they helped by re- 



PREPARES FOR COLLEGE. 81 

pression, for there was mucli that was uncongenial in 
his early life ; yet the clairvoyance, the unconscious wis- 
dom, of that interior quality, f/enius, made him feel that 
the adjustment of his outer and his inner life was such as 
to give him a chance of unfolding. Had he gone to sea, 
his awaking power would have come violently into con- 
tact with the hostile conditions of sailor-life : he would 
have revolted against them, and liave made his way into 
literature against head-wind or reluctant tiller-rope alike. 
It may, of course, be said that this prediction is too 
easy. But there are evidences of the mastering bent of 
Hawthorne's mind, which show that it would have ruled 
in any case. 

As we have seen, he returned to Salem in 1819, to 
scliool ; and on March 7, 1820, he wrote thus to his 
mother : — 

" I have left school, and have begun to fit for College 
under Benjm. L. Oliver, Lawyer. So you are in great 
danger of having one learned man in your family. Mr. 
Oliver thought I could enter College next commence- 
ment, but Uncle Robert is afraid I should have to study 
too hard. I get my lessons at home, and recite them to 

him [Mr. Oliver] at 7 o'clock in the morning 

Shall you want me to be a Minister, Doctor, or Lawyer ? 
A minister I will not be." This is the first dawn of the 
question of a career, apparently. Yet lie still has a 
yearning to escape the solution. " I am extremely 
liomesick," he says, in one part of the letter ; and at the 
close he gives way to the sentiment entirely : " O how 
I wish I was again with you, with nothing to do but to 
go a gunning. But the happiest days of my life are 

gone After I have got througli college, I will come 

down to learn E Latin and Greek." (Is it too 

fanciful to note that at this stage of the epistle " college" 

4 * F 



82 WHAT CAHEER? 

is no longer spelt witli a large C ?) The signature to 
this letter shows the boy so amiably that I append it. 
" I remain," he says, 
" Your 

Affectionate 
and 
Dutiful 
son, 
and 
Most 
Obedient 
and 
Most 
Humble 
Servant, 
and 
Most 
Respectful 
and 
Most 
Hearty 
Well-wisher, 
Natuaniel Hathorne." 

A jesting device this, wliich the writer, w^re he now 
living, would perhaps think too trivial to make known ; 
yet why should we not recall with pleasure the fact that 
in his boyish days he could make this harmless little 
play, to throw an unexpected ray of humor and gladness 
into the lonely heart of his mother; far away in the Maine 
woods ? And with this pleasure, let there be something 
of honor and reverence for his pure young heart. 

In anotlier letter of this period* he had made a long 

* This letter, long in the possession of Miss E. P. Peahody, 
Mr, Hawthorne's sister-in-law, unfortunately does not exist any 



THE " EAKLY NOTES." 83 

stride towards the final cLoice, as witness tins ex- 
tract : — 

" I do not want to be a doctor and live by men's diseases, 
nor a minister to live by their sins, nor a lawyer and live by 
their quarrels. So, I don't see that there is anything left for 
me but to be an author. How would you like some day to 
see a whole shelf full of books, written by your sou, with 
* Hawthorne's Works ' printed on their backs ? " 

But, before going further, it will be well to look at cer- 
tain " Early Notes," purporting to be Hawthorne's, and 
published in the Portland "Transcript" at different times 
in 1871 and 1873. A mystery overhangs them ; * and it 
has been impossible, up to this time, to procure proof of 
their genuineness. Most of tlie persons named in them 
have, nevertheless, been identified by residents of Cum- 
berland County, who knew them in boyliood, and the 
internal evidence of authorship seems to make at least 
some of them Hawthorne's. On the first leaf of the 
manuscript book, said to contain them, was written (as 
reported by the discoverer) an inscription, to the effect 
that the book had been given to Nathaniel Hawthorne 
by his uncle Richard Manning, "with the advice that he 
write out his thoughts, some every day, in as good words 
as he can, upon any and all subjects, as it is one of 
the best means of his securing for mature years com- 
mand of thought and language " ; and this was dated at 
Raymond, June 1, ]816. This account, if true, puts 
the book into the boy's hands at the age of twelve. He 
did not go to Raymond to live until two years later, but 
had certainly been tliere^ before, and his Uncle Richard 

longer. The date has thus been forgotten, but the passage is 
clear in Miss Peabody's recollection. 
* See Appendix I. 



84 THEIR PROBABLE DATE. 

was already living there in 1816. So that the entries 
may have begun soon after June, of that year, though 
their mature character makes this improbable. In this 
case, they must cover more than a year's time. The 
dates were not given by the furnisher of the extracts, 
and only one item can be definitely provided with a date. 
This must have been penned in or after 1819 ; and yet it 
seems also probable that t he whole series was written be- 
fore the author's college days. If genuine, then, they 
hint the scope and quality of Hawthorne's perceptions 
during a few years antecedent to his college -course, and 
— wliether his own work or not — they picture the sort 
of life wliich he must have seen at Raymond. 

"Two kingbirds have built their nest between our house 
and the mill-pond. The male is more courageous than any 
creature that I know about. He seems to have taken posses- 
sion of the territory from the great pond to the small one, and 
goes out to war with every fish-hawk that flies from one to the 
other, over his dominion. The fish -hawks must be miserable 
cowards, to bj driven by such a speck of a bird. I have not 
yet seen one turn to defend himself. 

" Swapped pocket-knives with Robinson Cook yesterday. 
Jacob Dingley says that he cheated me, but I think not, for I 
cut a fishing-f <;le this morning, and did it well ; besides, he is 
a Quaker, and they never cheat." 

Richard Manning had married Susan Dingley ; this 
Jacob was probably her nephew. In this allusion to 
Quakers one might fancy a germ of tolerance which 
ripened into " The Gentle Boy." 

" Captain Britton from Otisfield was at Uncle Richard's to- 
day. Not long ago, uncle brought here from Salem a new kind 
of potatoes called ' Long Reds.' Captain Britton had some for 



^ EARLY NOTES. 85 

seed, and uncle asked how he liked them. He answered, ' They 
yield well, grow very long, — one end is very poor, and the 
other good for nothing.' I laughed about it after he was gone, 
but uncle looked sour and said there was no wit in his answer, 
and that the saying was ' stale.' It was new to me, and his 
way of saying it very funny. Perhaps uncle did not like to 
hear his favorite potato spoken of in that way, and that if 
the captain had praised it he would have been called witty." 

"Captain Britton promised to bring 'Gulliver's Travels' for 
me to read, the next time he comes this way, which is every 
time he goes to Portland. Uncle Richard has not the book 
in his library. 

" This morning the bucket got off the chain, and dropped 
back into the well. I wanted to go down on the stones and 
get it. Mother would not consent, for fear the wall might 
cave in, but hired Samuel Shane to go down. In the goodness 
of her heart, she thought the son of old Mrs. Shane not quite 
so valuable as the son of the Widow Hawthorne. God bless 
her for aU her love for me, though it may be some selfish. We 
are to have a pump in the well, after this mishap. 

" Washington Longley has been taking lessons of a drum- 
ming master. He was in the grist-mill to-day, and practised 
with two sticks on the half-bushel. I was astonished at the 
great number of strokes in a second, and if I had not seen that 
he had but two sticks, should have supposed that he was drum- 
ming with twenty." 

" Major Beny went past our house with a large drove of 
sheep yesterday. One, a last spring's lamb, gave out ; could 
go no farther. I saw him down near the bridge. The poor 
dumb creature looked into my eyes, and I thought I knew just 
what he would say if he could speak, and so asked Mr. Berry 
what he would sell him for. ' Just the price of his pelt, and 
that will bring sixty -five cents,' was the answer. I ran and 



86 EARLY NOTES. 

petitioned mother for the money, which she soon gave me, 
saying with a smile that she tried to make severe, hut could 
not, that I was ' a great spendthrift,' The lamh is in our 
orchard now, and he made a how (without taking off his 
hat) and thanked me this morning for saving him from the 
butcher. 

" "Went yesterday in a sail-boat on the Great Pond, with Mr. 
Peter White of Windham. He sailed up here from White's 
Bridge to see Captain Dingley, and invited Joseph Dingley 
and Mr. Ring to take a boat-ride out to the Dingley Islands 
and to the Images. He was also kind enough to say that I 
might go (with my mother's consent), which she gave after 
much coaxing. Since the loss of my father she dreads to have 
any one belonging to her go upon the water. It is strange 
that this beautiful body of water is called a ' Pond.' The 
geography tells of many in Scotland and Ireland not near so 
large that are caUed ' Lakes.' It is not respectful to speak 
of so noble, deep, and broad a collection of clear water as a 
' Pond' ; it makes a stranger think of geese, and then of goose- 
pond. Mr. White, who knows all this region, told us that the 
streams from thirty -five ponds, large and small, flow into this, 
and he calls it Great Basin. We landed on one of the small 
islands that Captain Dingley cleared for a sheep pasture when 
he first came to Raymond. Mr. Ring said that he had to do it 
to keep his sheep from the bears and wolves. A growth of 
trees has started on the island, and makes a grove so fine and 
pleasant, that I wish ahnost that our house was there. On 
the way from the island to the Images Mr. Ring caught 
a black spotted trout that was almost a whale, and weighed 
before it was cut open, after we got back to Uncle Richard's 
store, eighteen and a half pounds. The men said that if it had 
been weighed as soon as it came out of the water it would 
have been nineteen pounds. This trout had a droll-looking 
hooked nose, and they tried to make me believe, that if the 
line had been in my hands, that I should have been obliged to 



EARLY NOTES, 87 

let go, or have been pulled out of the boat. They were men, 
and had a right to say so. I am a boy, and have a right to 
think differently. We landed at the Images, when I crept into 
the cave and got a drink of cool water. In coming home we 
sailed over a place, not far from the Images, where Mr. "White 
has, at some time, let down a line four hundred feet without 
finding bottom. This seems strange, for he told us, too, that 
his boat, as it floated, was only two hundred and fifty feet 
higher than the boats in Portland Harbor, and that if the 
Great Pond was pumped dry, a man standing on its bottom, just 
under where we then were, would be more than one hundred 
and fifty feet lower than the surface of the water at the Port- 
land wharves. Coming up the Dingley Bay, had a good view 
of Rattlesnake Mountain, and it seemed to me wonderfully 
beautiful as the almost setting sun threw over its western 
crags streams of fiery light. If the Indians were very fond of 
this part of the country, it is easy to see why ; beavers, otters, 
and the finest fish were abundant, and the hills and streams 
furnished constant variety. I should have made a good Indian, 
if I had been born in a wigwam. To talk like sailors, we 
made the old hemlock-stub at the mouth of the Dingley Mill 
Brook just before sunset, and sent a boy ashore with a hawser, 
and was soon safely moored to a bunch of alders. After we 
got ashore Mr. White allowed me to fire his long gun at a 
mark. I did not hit the mark, and am not sure that I saw it 
at the time the gun went off, but believe, rather, that I was 
watching for the noise that I was about to make. Mr. Ring 
said that with practice I could be a gunner, and that now, with 
a very heavy charge, he thought I could kill a horse at eight 
paces. Mr. White went to Uncle Richard's for the night, and 
I went home and amused my mother with telling how pleas- 
antly the day had passed. When I told her what Mr. Ring 
said about my killing a horse, she said he was making fun of 
me. I had found that out before. 

" Mr. March Gay killed a rattlesnake yesterday not far fi-om 
his house, that was more than six feet long and had twelve 



88 EAELY NOTES. 

rattles. This morning Mr. Jacob Mitchell killed another near 
the same place, almost as long. It is supposed that they were 
a pair, and that the second one was on the track of its mate. 
If every rattle counts a yeai", the first one was twelve years 
old. Eliak. Maxfield came down to mill to-day and told me 
about the snakes. 

" Mr. Henry Turner of Otisfield took his axe and went out 
between Saturday and Moose ponds to look at some pine-trees. 
A rain had just taken off enough of the snow to lay bare the 
roots of a part of the trees. Under a large root there seemed 
to be a cavity, and on examining closely something was ex- 
posed very much like long black hair. He cut off the root, 
saw the nose of a bear, and killed him, pulled out the body ; 
saw another, killed that, and dragged out its carcass, when he 
found that there was a third one in the den, aud that he was 
thoroughly awake, too ; but as soon as the head came in sight 
it was split open with the axe, so that Mr. Turner, alone with 
only an axe, killed three bears in less than half an hour, the 
youngest being a good-sized one, and what hunters call a year- 
ling. This is a pretty great bear story, but probably true, 
and happened only a few weeks ago ; for John Patch, who was 
here with his father Captain liCvi Patch, who lives within two 
miles of the Saturday Pond, told me so yesterday. 

" A young man named Henry Jackson, Jr., was drowned two 
days ago, up in Crooked River. He and one of his friends 
were trying which could swim the faster. Jackson was be- 
hind but gaining ; his friend kicked at him in fun, thinking to 
hit his shoulder and push him back, but missed, and hit his 
chin, which caused him to take in water and strangle, and 
before his friend could help or get help, poor Jackson was 
(Elder Leach says) beyond the reach of mercy. I read one of 
the Psalms to my mother this morning, and it plainly declares 
twenty-six times that ' God's mercy endureth forever.' I 
never saw Henry Jackson ; he was a young man just married. 
Mother is sad, says that she shall not consent to my swimming 



EARLY NOTES. 89 

any more in tlie mill-pond with the boys, fearing that in sport 
my mouth might get kicked open, and then sorrow for a dead 
son be added to that for a dead father, which she says would 
break her heart. I love to swim, but I shall not disobey my 
mother. 

" Fishing from the bridge to-day, I caught an eel two thirds 
as long as myself. Mr. Watkins tried to make me believe that 
he thought it a water moccasin snake. Old Mr. Shane said 
that it was a ' young sea-sarpint sure.' Mi*. Ticket, the black- 
smith, begged it to take home for its skin, as he said for buskin- 
strings and flail-strings. So ends my day's fishing. 

" Went over to-day to see Watkins make bricks. I have 
always thought there was some mystery about it, but I can 
make them myself. Why did the Israelites complain so much 
at having to make bricks without straw? I shonld not use 
straw if I was a brick-maker ; besides, when they are burned in 
the kiln, the straw will burn out and leave the bricks full of 
holes. 

" I can, from my chamber window, look across into Aunt 
Manning's garden, this morning, and see little Betty Tarbox, 
flitting among the rose-bushes, and in and out of the arbor, like 
a tiny witch. She will never realize the calamity that came 
upon her brothers and sisters that terrible night when her 
father and mother lay within a few rods of each other, in the 
snow, freezing to death. I love the elf, because of her loss ; 
and still my aunt is much more to her than her own mother, 
in her poverty, could have been." 

This little girl was the child of some poor people of 
the neighborhood who were frozen to death one Mai-cli 
night, in 1819. In a letter to his uncle Robert, March 
21, 1819, Nathaniel says: "I suppose you liave not 
heard of the death of Mr. Tarbox and his wife, who were 
froze to death last Weduesday. They were brought out 



90 EARLY NOTES. 

from the Cape on Saturday, and buried from Captain 
Dingley's on Sunday." This determines the time of 
writing the last-quoted extract from the journal. 

" This morning I saw at the grist-mill a solemn-faced old 
horse, hitched to the trough. He had hrought for his owner 
some hags of corn to he ground, who, after carrying them into 
the mill, walked up to Uncle Richard's store, leaving his half- 
starved animal in the cold wind with nothing to eat, while the 
corn was being turned to meal. I felt sorry, and nobody being 
near, thought it best to have a talk with the old nag, and said, 
' Good morning, Mr. Horse, how are you to-day ? ' ' Good 
morning, youngster,' said he, just as plain as a horse can 
speak, and then said, ' I am almost dead, and I wish 1 was 
quite. I am hungry, have had no breakfast, and must stand 
here tied by the head while they are grinding the corn, ajid 
until master drinks two or three glasses of rum at the store, 
then drag him and the meal up the Ben Ham HilJ, and home, 
and am now so weak that I can hardly stand. dear, I am in 
a bad way ' ; and the old creature cried. I almost cried myself. 
Just then the miller went down stairs to the meal-trough ; 
I heard his feet on the steps, and not thinking much what I 
was doing, ran into the mill, and taking the four-quart toll-dish 
nearly full of corn out of the hopper, carried it out and poured 
it into the trough before the horse, and placed the dish back 
before the miller came up from below. When I got out, the 
horse was laughing, but he had to eat slowly, because the bits 
were in his mouth. I told him that I was sorry, but did not 
know how to take them out, and should not dare to if I did, 
for his master might come out and see what 1 was about. 
' Thank you,' said he, ' a luncheon of corn with the bits in 
is much better than none. The worst of it is, I have to munch 
so slowly, that master may come before I finish it, and thrash 
me for eating his corn, and you for the kindness.' I sat down 
on a stone out of the wind, and waited in trouble, for fear thatv 
the miller and the owner of the corn would come and find out 



EARLY NOTES. 91 

what I had done. At last the horse winked and stuck out his- 
upper lip ever so far, and then said, ' The last kernel is gone ' ; 
then he laughed a little, then shook one ear, then the other, 
then shut his eyes as if to take a nap. I jumped up and said : 
' How do you feel, old fellow ; any better ? ' He opened his 
eyes, and looking at me kindly, answered 'very much,' and. 
then blew his nose exceedingly loud, but he did not wipe it. 
Perhaps he had no wiper. I then asked if his master whipped 
him much. He opened his eyes, and looking at me kindly, an- 
swered, ' Not much lately ; he used to till my hide got hard- 
ened, but now he has a white-oak goad-stick with an iron brad 
in its end, with which he jabs my hind quarters and hurts me 
awfully.' I asked him why he did not kick up, and knock his 
tormentor out of the wagon. ' I did try once,' said he, ' but 
am old and was weak, and could only get my heels high enough 
to break the whifiietree, and besides lost my balance and fell 
down flat. Master then jumped down, and getting a cudgel 
struck me over the head, and I thought my troubles were over. 
This happened just before Mr. Ben Ham's house, and I should 
have been finished and ready for the crows, if he had not stepped 
out and told master not to strike again, if he did he would 
shake his liver out. That saved my life, but I Avas sorry, 
though Mr. Ham meant good.' The goad with the iron brad 
was in the wagon, and snatching it out I struck the end against 
a stone, and the stabber flew into the mill-pond. ' There,' 
says I, ' old colt,' as I threw the goad back into the wagon, ' he 
won't harpoon you again with that iron.' The poor old brute 
knew well enough what I said, for I looked him in the eye and 
spoke horse language. At that moment the brute that owned 
the horse came out of the store, and down the hill towards us. 
I slipped behind a pile of slabs. The meal was put in the 
wagon, the horse unhitched, the wagon mounted, the goad 
picked up and a thrust made, but dobbin was in no hurry. 
Looking at the end of the stick, the man bawled, ' What little 
devil has had my goad ? ' and then began striking with all his 
strength ; but his steed only walked, shaking his head as he 



93 EARLY NOTES. 

went across the bridge ; and I thought I heai-d the ancient 
Equus say as he went, ' Thrash as much as you please, for 
once you cannot stab.' I went home a little uneasy, not feel- 
ing sure that the feeding the man's corn to his horse was not 
stealing, and thinking that if the miller found it out, he would 
have me taken down before Squire Longley. 

" Polly Maxfield came riding to mill to-day on horseback. 
She rode as gracefully as a Trooper. 1 wish with all my heart 
that I was as daring a rider, or half so graceful. 

" This morning walked down to the Pulpit Rock Hill, and 
climbed up into the pulpit. It looks like a rough place to 
preach from, and does not seem so much like a pulpit when one 
is in it, as when viewing it from the road below. It is a 
wild place, and really a curiosity. I brought a book and sat 
in the rocky recess, and read for nearly an hour. This is 
a point on the road known to all teamsters. They have a 
string of names for reference by which they tell each other 
where they met fellow-teamsters and where their loads got 
stuck, and I have learned them fi'om those who stop for drinks 
at the store. One meets another near our house, and says, 
* Where did you meet Bill ? ' ' Just this side of Small's 
Brook,' or ' At the top of Gray's Pinch,' ' At the Dry Mill- 
Pond,' 'Just the other side of Lemmy Jones's,' 'On the 
long causeway,' ' At Jeems Goweu's,' ' Coming down the 
Pulpit Rock Hill,' ' Coming down Tarkill Hill.' I have heard 
these answers till I have them by heart, without having any 
idea where any of the places are, excepting the one I have 
seen to-day. While on the bridge near the Pulpit, Mr. West, 
who lives not far away, came along and asked where I had 
been. On my telling him, he said that no money would hire 
him to go up to that pulpit ; that the Devil used to pi-each from 
it long and long ago ; that on a time when hundreds of them 
were listening to one of his sermons, a gi-eat chief laughed in 
the Devil's face, upon which he stamped his foot, and the ground 



EARLY NOTES. 93 

to the southwest, where they were standing, sunk fifty feet, and 
every Indian went down out of sight, leaving a swamp to this 
day. He declared that he once stuck a pole in there, which 
went down easily several feet, hut then struck the skull-bone of 
an Indian, when instantly all the hassocks and flags began to 
shake ; he heard a yell as from fifty overgrown Pequots ; that 
he left the pole and ran for life, Mr. West also said that no 
Indian had ever been known to go near that swamp since, but 
that whenever one came that way, he turned out of the road 
near the house of Mr. West, and went straight to Thomas 
Pond, keeping to the eastward of Pulpit Rock, giving it a 
wide berth. Mr. West talked as though he believed what he 
said. 

" A pedler named Dominicus Jordan was to-day in Uncle 
Richard's store, telling a ghost-story. I listened intently, but 
tried not to seem interested. The story was of a house, the 
owner of which was suddenly killed. Since his death the west 
garret-window cannot be kept closed ; though the shutters be 
hasped and nailed at night, they are invariably found open the 
next morning, and no one can tell when or how the nails were 
drawn. There is also on the form an apple-tree, the fruit of 
which the owner was particularly fond of, but since his death 
no one has been able to get one of the apples. The tree hangs 
full nearly every year, but whenever any individual tries to get 
one, stones come in all directions as if from some secret infernal 
battery, or hidden catapult, and more than once have those mak- 
ing the attempts been struck. What is more strange, the tree 
stands in an open field, there being no shelter near from which 
tricks can be played without exposure. Jordan says that it 
seems odd to strangers to see that tree loaded with apples when 
the snow is four feet deep ; and, what is a mystery, there are 
no apples in the spring ; no one ever sees the wind blow one 
oif, none are seen on the snow, nor even the vestige of one on 
the grass under the tree ; and that children may play on the 
grass under and around it while it is in the blossom, and until 



94 EARLY NOTES. 

the fruit is large enough to tempt theni, with perfect safety; 
but the moment one of the apples is sought for, the air is full 
of flying stones. He further says, that late one starlight night 
he was passing the house, and looking up saw the phantom 
walk out of the garret window with cane in hand, making all 
the motions as if walking on terra frma, although what ap- 
peared to be his feet were at least six yards from the ground ; 
and so he went walking away on nothing, and when neai'ly out 
of sight there was a great flash and an explosion as of twenty 
fleld-jiieces, then — nothing. This story was told with seeming 
earnestness, and listened to as though it was believed. How 
strange it is that almost all persons, old or young, are fond of 
hearing about the supernatural, though it produces nervousness 
and fear ! I should not be willing to sleep in that gan-et, 
though I do not believe a word of the story. 

*' The lumbermen from Saccarappa are getting their logs 
across the Great Pond. Yesterday a strong noithwest wind 
blew a great raft of many thousands over almost to the mouth 
of the Dingley Brook. Their anchor dragged for more than a 
mile, but when the boom was within twenty or thirty rods of 
the shore, it brought up, and held, as I heard some men say 
w^ho are familiar with such business. All the men and boys 
went from the mill down to the pond to see the great raft, and I 
among them. They have a string of logs fastened end to end and 
surrounding the great body, Avhich keeps them from scattei'ing, 
and the string is called a boom. A small, strong raft, it may 
be forty feet square, with an upright windlass in its centre, 
called a capstan, is fastened to some part of the boom. The 
small raft is called ' Head Works,' and from it in a yawl-boat 
is carried the anchor, to which is attached a strong rope half a 
mile long. The boat is rowed out the whole length of the 
rope, the anchor thrown over, and the men on thcy-headworks 
wind up the capstan and so draw along the acres of logs. After 
we went down to the shoi-e, several of the men came out on the 
boom nearest to us, and, striking a single log, pushed it under 



EARLY NOTES. 95 

and outside ; then one man with a gallon jug slung to his 
back, taking a pickpole, pushed himself ashore on the small 
single log, — a feat that seemed almost miraculous to mc. 
This man's name was Reuben Murch, and he seemed to be in 
no fear of getting soused. This masterly kind of navigation 
he calls ' cuffing the rigging ' ; nobody could tell me why he 
gave it that name. Murch went up to the store, had the jug 
filled with rum (the supply having run out on the head works), 
and made the voyage back the way he came. His comrades 
received him with cheers, and after sinking the log and draw- 
ing it back under the boom, proceeded to try the contents of 
the jug, seeming to be well satisfied with the result of his ex- 
pedition. It turned out that Murch only rode the single log 
ashore to show his adroitness, for the yaw4-boat came round 
from the headworks, and brought near a dozen men in red 
shirts to where we were. 1 was interested listening to their 
conversation mixed with sharp jokes. Nearly every man had a 
nickname. Murch was called ' Captain Snarl ' ; a tall, fierce- 
looking man, who just filled my idea of a Spanish freebooter, 
was ' Dr. Coddle.' I think his real jiame was Wood. The rum 
seems to make them crazy, for one, who was called 'Rub-a-dub,' 
pitched ' Dr. Coddle ' head and heels into the water. A gen- 
tlemanly man named Thompson, who acted as master of cere- 
monies, or Grand Turk, interfered and put a stop to what was 
becoming something like a fight. Mr. Thompson said that the 
wind would go down with the sun, and that they must get 
ready to start. This morning I went down to look for them, 
and the raft was almost to Fiye's Island. 

" I have read ' Gulliver's Travels,' but do not agree with 
Captain Britton that it is a witty and uncommonly interesting 
book ; the wit is obscene, and the lies too false." 

The next and last piece of this note-book was printed 
two years later than the preceding items, and after the 
death of the person who professed to own the manuscript. 



96 ANOTHER EXTRACT. 

but still with the same degree of mystery, except in the 
matter of date. 

" Day before yesterday Mr. Thomas Little from "Windham, 
Mr. M. P. Sawyer of Portland, Mr. Thomas A. Deblois, a law- 
yer, Mr. Hanson of Windham, and Enot-li White, a boy of about 
my own age, from Wliite's Bridge, came up to the Dinglcy 
Brook in a sail-boat. They were on the way to Muddy River 
Bog, for a day's sport, tishing, and shooting ducks. Enoch pro- 
posed that I should go with them. I needed no urging, btit 
knew how unwillingly my mother would consent. They could 
wait but a few minutes, and Uncle Richard kindly wrote a note, 
asking her to be willing to gratify me f/iis time. 

" She said, ' Yes,' but I was almost sorry, knowing that my 
day's pleasure would cost /wr one of anxiety. However, I 
gathered up hooks and lines, with some white salted pork lor 
bait, and with a fabulous number of biscuit, split in the middle, 
the insides well buttered, then skilfully put together again, and 
all stowed in sister's large work-bag, and slung over my shoul- 
der. I started, making a wager with Enoch White, as we 
walked down to the botit, as to which would catch the largest 
number of fish. 

" The air Avas clear, with just breeze enough to shoot us 
along pleasantly, without making rough waves. The wind was 
not exactly after us, though we made but two tacks to reach 
the mouth of Muddy River. The men praised the grand view, 
after we got into the Great Bay. We could see the White 
Hills to the northwest, though Mr. Little said they were 
eighty miles from us ; and grand old Rattlesnake, to the nortli- 
east, in its immense jacket of green oak, looked more inviting 
than I had ever seen it ; while Frye's Island, with its close 
growth of great trees, growing to the veiy edge of the water, 
looked like a monstrous green raft, floating to the southeastward. 
Whichever way the eye turned, something charming appeared. 

" Mr. Little seems to be familiar Avilh every book that has 
ever been Avritten, and nmst have a great memory. Among 
other things, he said : — 



SEBAGO LAKE. 97 

*' ' Gentlemen, do you know that this should he called the sea, 
instead of the Great Pond ; that ships should he huilt here and 
navi<2jate this water ? The surface of the Sea of Galilee, of 
which we hear so much in the New Testament, was just ahout 
equal to the surface of our sea to-day.' 

" And then he went on to give a geographical description of 
the country about the Sea of Galilee, and draw parallels be- 
tween places named in the Testament and points in sight. 
His talk stole my attention until we were fairly at Muddy 
River mouth. 

"Muddy River Bog is quite a curiosity. The river empties 
into the pond between two small sandy capes or points, only 
a short distance apart ; but after running up a little between 
them we found the bog to widen to fifty or sixty rods in some 
places, and to be between two or three miles long. People say 
that it has no bottom, and that the longest poles that ever 
grew may be run down into the mud and then pushed down 
with another a little longer, and this may be repeated until 
the long poles are all gone. 

" Coarse, tall water-grass grows up from the mud over every 
part, with the exception of a place five or six rods wide, run- 
ning its whole length, and nearly in the middle, which is called 
the Channel. One can tell at first sight that it is the place 
for pickerel and water-snakes. 

" Mr^Deblois stated something that I never heard before as 
a fact in natural history, that the pickerel wages war upon all 
fish, except the trout, who is too active for him ; that he is a 
piscatorial cannibal ; but that under all circumstances and in all 
places, he lives on good terms with the water-snake. 

" We saw a great many ducks, but they seemed to know that 
Mr. Sawyer had a gun, and flew on slight notice. At last, as 
four were flying and seemed to be entirely out of gunshot, he 
fired, saying he would frighten them, if no more ; when, to our 
surprise, he brought one down. The gun was loaded with ball, 
and Mr. Dcblois told him he could not do it again in a million 
shots. Mr. Sawyer laughed, saying that hie had always been a 
5 G 



98 TROLLING AND POUT- FISHING. 

votary of Chance, and that, as a general thing, she had treated 
him handsomely. 

" We sailed more than a mile up the bog, fishing and troll- 
ing for pickerel ; and though we saw a great many, not one 
offered to be caught, but horned pouts were willing, and we 
caught them till it was no sport. We found a man there who 
had taken nearly two bushels of pouts. He was on a raft, and 
had walked from near the foot of I^ong Pond, in Otisfitld. 
Mr. Little knew him, and, intending to have some fun, said, 
'The next time you come to Portland I want half a dozen 
of your best jewsharps ; leave them at my store at Windham 
Hill. I need them very badly.' 

" The man deliberately took from the hook a large pout that 
he had just pulled up, and, laying his fishing-pole down, began 
solemnly to explore in his pockets, and brought out six quaint 
jewsharps carefully tied to pieces of corn-cobs ; then he tossed 
them into our boat to Mr. Little, saying, ' There they are, 
Tom, and they are as good ones as I ever made ; I shall charge 
you fifty cents for them.' Mr. Little had the worst of the 
joke ; but as the other men began to rally him, he took out the 
silver and paid the half-dollar ; but they laughed at him till he 
told them, if they would say no more about it, he would give 
them all the brandy they could drink when they got home. 

" Mr. Deblois said he would not be bribed ; that he must tell 
Peter White when he got to Windham Hill. 

" INIr. Little said he would not have Peter White know it 
for a yoke of steers. 

" After fishing till all were tired, we landed on a small dry 
knoll that made out into the bog, to take our luncheon. The 
men had a variety of eatables, and several bottles that held no 
eatables. The question was started whether Enoch and I 
should be invited to drink, and they concluded not to urge us, 
as we were boys, and under their care. So Mr. Deblois said, 
' Boys, anything to eat that is in our baskets is as much yours 
as ours ; help yourselves ; but we shall not invite you to drink 
spirits.' 



THE POINT OF A JOKE. 99 

" We thanked them, and said that we had plenty of onr own 
to eat, and had no relish for spirits, but were very thirsty for 
water. Mr. Little had been there before, and directed us to a 
spring of the best of water, that boiled up like a pot from the 
ground, just at the margin of the bog. 

" Before starting to return, the bet between Enoch and my- 
self had to be settled. By its conditions, the one who caught 
the largest number of fish was to have all the hooks and lines 
of the other. I counted my string and found twenty-five. 
Enoch made twenty-six on his ; so I was about turning over 
the spoils, when Mr. Sawyer said that my string was the lar- 
gest, and that there was a mistake. So he counted, and made 
twenty-six on mine, and twenty-five on Enoch's. We counted 
again, and found it was as he said, and Enoch prepai'ed to pay 
the bet, when Mr. Sawyer again interfered, saying that Enoch's 
string was certainly larger than mine, and proposed to count 
again. This time I had but twenty -four, and Enoch twenty - 
seven. All the men counted them several times over, until we 
could not tell which was which, and they never came out twice 
alike. 

" At length Mr. Deblois said solemnly, ' Stop this. Sawyer, 
you have turned these fish into a pack of cards, and are fooling 
us all.' The men laughed heartily, and so should I if I had 
known what the point of the joke was. 

" Mr. Deblois said the decision as to our bet would have to 
go over to the next term. After starting for home, while run- 
ning down the bog, Mr. Sawyer killed three noble black ducks 
at one shot, but the gun was not loaded this time with ball. 
Mr. Hanson struck with his fishing -pole, and killed a mon- 
strous water-snake. Mr. Little measuied a stick with his 
hands, and using it as a rule, declared him to be five feet long. 
If I thought any such snakes ever went over to Dingley Bay, 
I never would go into the water there again. 

" When we got out of the bog into the open water, we found 
a lively breeze from the northwest, and they landed me at the 
Dingley Brook in less than an hour, and theu kept on like a 



100 END OF THE JOURNAL. 

great white bird down towards the Cape, and for the outlet. I 
stood and watched the boat until it was nearly half-way to 
Frye's Island, loath to lose sight of what had helped me to 
enjoy the day so much. Taking my fish I walked home, and 
greeted mother just as the sun went out of sight behind the 
hills in Baldwin. The fish were worthless, but I thought I 
nmst have something to show for the day spent. After ex- 
hibiting them to mother and sister, and hearing the comments 
as to their ugliness, and much speculation as to what their 
horns were for, I gave them to Mr. Lambard, who said that 
pouts were the best of fish after they were skinned. 

" I have made this account of the expedition to please Uncle 
Richard, who is an invalid and cannot get out to enjoy such, 
sport, and wished me to describe everything just as it had hap- 
pened, whether witty or silly, and give my own impressions. 
lie has read my diary, and says that it interested him, which is 
all the reward I desire. And now I add these lines to keep in 
remembrance the peculiar satisfaction I received in hearing the 
conversation, especially of Mr. Deblois and Mr. Little. August, 
1818, Raymond." 

These extracts from the Raymond Journal, if tliey be 
genuine, as in most respects I believe they must be, will 
furnish a clew, otherwise wanting, to the distinct turn 
which the boy's mind took toward authorship after his 
return to Salem, and on passing the propylon of classi- 
cal culture. We can also see in them, I think, the begin- 
ning of that painstaking accumulation of fact, the effort 
to be first of all accurate, which is a characteristic of his 
maturer and authenticated note-books ; very significant, 
too, is tlie dash of the supernatural and his tone concern- 
ing it. A habit of thus preserving impressions, and of 
communing with himself through the pen, so constant 
and assiduous as we know it to have been in his later 
years, — even when mind and time were preoccupied, — • 



"the spectator." 101 

must liave been formed early, to retain so strong a liold 
upon him. But there is another reason for supposing 
that he had begun to compose with care before coming 
from Raymond to Salem ; and this is found in the fact 
that, in 1820, he began issuing (probably to a very small 
and intimate circle of subscribers) a neat little weekly 
paper printed with the pen on sheets of a much-curtailed 
note size, and written in an excellent style. 

The first number, dated Monday, August 21, 1820, 
opens with the Editor's Address : — 

" Our feelings upon sending into the world the first number 
of the Spectator may be compared to those of a fond Parent, 
when he beholds a beloved child about to embark on the 
troubled Ocean of public Life. Perhaps the iron hand of Criti- 
cism may crush our humble undertaking, ere it is strength- 
ened by time. Or it may pine in obscurity neglected and for- 
gotten by those, with whose assistance it might become the 
Pride and Ornament of our Country We beg leave far- 
ther to remark that in order to carry on any enterprise with 
spirit Money is absolutely necessary. Money, although it is 
the root of all evil, is also the foundation of everything great 
and good, and therefore our Subscribers .... will please care- 
fully to remember that the terms are two cents per month." 

A little further on there is this allusion to the Scrip- 
tural proverb cited above : " We have been informed that 
this expression is incorrect, and that it is the love of 
Money which is the ' Root of all Evil.' But money is 
certainly the cause of the love of Money. Therefore, 
Money is the deepest ' Root of Evil.' " (Observe, here, 
the young student's pride of reason, and the conscious- 
ness of a gift for casuistry !) Under the head of "Do- 
mestic News" occur some remarks on the sea-serpent, 
the deduction from various rumors about the monster 



lOB CHARACTERISTIC CONTENTS. 

being tliat " lie seems to possess a strange and we tliink 
rather unusual faculty of appearing iu different shapes 
to different eyes, so that where one person sees a shark, 
another beholds a nameless dragon." (Here, too, is the 
humorously veiled distrust that always lurked beneath 
his dealings with the marvellous.) In the next columns 
there is found an advertisement of the Pin Societ}^, 
which "will commence lending pins to any creditable 
person, on Wednesday, the 28d instant. No numbers 
except ten, twenty, and thirty will be lent"; and the 
rate of interest is to be one pin on every ten per day. 
This bold financial scheme is also carried on by the 
editor in person, — a combination which in these days 
would lay him open to suspicions of unfair dealing. I 
have seen a little manuscript book containing the re- 
markable constitution and by-laws of this society, in 
which there were but two members; and it is really 
a curious study of whimsical intricacy, the worlc of a 
mind perfectly accustomed to solitude and fertile in re- 
sources for making monotony various and delightful. It 
does not surprise one to meet with the characteristic 
announcement from this editor that he has " concluded 
not to insert deaths and marriages (except of very dis- 
tinguished persons) in the Spectator. We can see but 
little use in thus giving to the world the names of the 
crowd who are tying the marriage knot, and going down 
to the silent tomb." There is some poetry at the end 
of the paper, excellent for a boy, but without the easy 
inspiration of the really witty prose. 

it would seem that this weekly once made a beginning, 
which was also an end, before flourishing up into the 
series of which I have synopsized the first issue; for 
there is another Number Oue without date, but appar- 
ently earlier. This contains some exemplary sentiments 



EDITOUIAL WIT. 103 

'" On Solitude," with a toucli of wliat was real pro- 
fundity in so inexperienced a writer. " Man is naturally 
a sociable being," lie says ; " and apart from the world 
there are uo incitements to the pursuit of excellence ; 
there are no rivals to contend with ; and therefore there 

is no improvement The heart may be more pure 

and uncorrupted in solitude than when exposed to the 
influences of the depravity of the world ; but the benetit 
of virtuous examples is equal to the detriment of vicious 
ones, and both are equally lost." The " Domestic Intel- 
ligence" of this number is as follows : " The lady of Dr. 
Winthrop Brown, a son and Heir. Mrs. Hathorne's cat, 
Seven Kittens. We hear that both of the above ladies 
are in a state of convalescence." Also, " Intentions of 
Marriage. The beautiful and accomplished Miss Keziah 
Dingley will shortly be united to Dominicus Jordan 
Esq." (The young author appears to have allowed him- 
self in this paragraph the stimulus of a little fiction 
respecting real persons. Dominicus Jordan is the pedler 
of the Raymond notes. Who Miss Keziah was I do not 
know, but from the name I guess her to have been a 
relative, by appellation at least, through Richard Man- 
ning's wife. If Hawthorne did not himself call Miss 
Diugley aunt, he may very likely have heard her com- 
monly spoken of by that title. Did the old, boyish as- 
sociation perhaps unconsciously supply him with a nauie 
for the Indian aunt of " Septimius Eelton"?) The next 
item is " Deaths. We are sorry to be under the neces- 
sity of informing our readers that no deaths of impor- 
tance have taken place, except that of the publisher of 
this Paper, who died of Starvation, owing to the slender- 
ness of his patronage." Notwithstanding this discour- 
aging incident, one of the advertisements declares that 
" Employment will be given to any number of indigent 



104 MOCK DISASTERS. 

Poets and Authors at tins office." But sliortly afterward 
is inserted the announcement that " Nathaniel Hathorne 
proposes to publish by subscription a new edition of tiie 
Miseries of Authors, to which will be added a sequel, 
containing Facts and Remarks drawn from his own ex- 
perience." 

In Number Two of the new series, the editor speaks of 

a discourse by Dr. Stoughton, "on Tuesday evening 

With the amount of the contribution which was taken 
up .... we are unacquainted, as, having no money in 
our pockets, we departed before it commenced." This 
issue takes a despondent view of the difficulties that be- 
set editors. There is a clever paragraph of " Domestic 
News " again. " As we know of no News," it says, 
" we hope our readers will excuse us for not inserting 
any. The law which prohibits paying debts when a per- 
son has no money will apply in this case." Next we 
have a very arch dissertation " On Industry": "It has 
somewhere been remarked that an Author does not write 
the worse for knowing little or nothing of his subject. 
We hope the truth of this saying will be manifest in the 
present article. With the benefits of Industry we are 
not personally acquainted." The desperate editor winds 
up his week's budget with a warning to all persons who 
may be displeased by observations in the Spectator, 
tliat he is going to take fencing lessons and practise 
shooting at a mark. " We also," he adds, " think it 
advisable to procure a stout oaken cudgel to be the con- 
stant companion of our peregrinations." The assump- 
tion of idleness in the essay on Industry, just quoted, 
breaks down entirely in a later number, when the editor 
— in apologizhig for inaccuracies in the printing of his 
paper — enumerates his different occupations : " In the 
first place we study Latin and Greek. Secondly we 



ESSAY "ON WEALTH." 105 

write ill the employment of William Manning Esq., 
[at that time proprietor of an extensive line of stage- 
coaches]. Thirdly, we are Secretary, Treasurer, and 
Manager of the ' Pin Society ' ; Fourthly, we are editor 
of the Spectator ; fifthly, sixthly, and lastly, our own 
Printers, Printing Press and Types." But the young 
journalist carried on his labors unabatedly, for the 
term of some five weeks, and managed to make himself 
very entertaining. I take from an essay " On Benevo- 
lence " a fragment which has a touch of poetry out of 
his own life. Benevolence, he says, is "to protect the 
fatherless, and to make the Widow's heart sing for joy." 
One of the most cherishable effusions is that "On 
Wealth," in which the venerable writer drops into a 
charmingly confidential and reminiscent vein. " All 
men," he begins, " from the highest to the lowest, desire 

to pursue wealth In process of time if we obtain 

possession " of a sum at first fixed as the ultimatum, " we 
generally find ourselves as far from being contented as 

at first When I was a boy, I one day made an 

inroad into a closet, to the secret recesses of which I had 
often wished to penetrate. I there discovered a quan- 
tity of very fine apples. At first I determined to take 
only one, which I put in my pocket. But those which 
remained were so very inviting that it M^as against my 
conscience to leave them, and I filled my pockets and 
departed, wishing that they would hold more. But alas ! 
an apple which was unable to find space enough among its 
companions bounced down upon the floor before all the 
Pamily. I was immediately searched, and forced, very un- 
willingly, to deliver up all my booty." In the same num- 
ber which contains this composition appears the token of 
what was doubtless Hawthorne's first recognition in liter- 
ature. It is a " Communication," of tenor following : — - 
5* 



106 A TOUCH OF SATIRE. 

" Mr. Editor : T have observed in some of your last papers, 
Essays on Various subjects, and am very much pleased with 
them, and wnsh you to continue them. If you will do this, 
you will oblige 

"Maria Louisa Hathorne." 

"'We hail the above coiiimuiiication," writes the editor 
with exaggerated gratitude, " as tlie dawn of a happy 
day for us." In liis next and final issue, though (Sep- 
tember, 18, 1820), he satirically evinces his dissatisfac- 
tion at the want of a literary fraternity in his native land, 
through this " Request " : — 

" As it is part of the plan of the Spectator to criticise 
home-manufactured publications, we most earnestly de- 
sire some of our benevolent Readers to write a book for 
our special benefit. At present we feel as we were wont 
to do in the days of our Boyhood, wlien we possessed a 
Hatchet, without anything to exercise it upon. We en- 
gage to execute the Printing and Binding, and to procure 
the Paper for the Work, free of all expense to tlie Au- 
thor. If this request should be denied us, we must in- 
fallibly turn our arms against our own writings, which, 
as they will not stand the test of criticism, we feel very 
unwilling to do. We do not wish that the proposed work 
should be too perfect ; the Author will please to make 
a few blunders for us to exercise our Talents upon." 

In these quotations one sees very clearly the increased 
maturity (though it be only by a year or two) of the 
lad, since the engrossing of his records at Raymond. 
We get in these his entire mood, catch gleams of a 
steady fire of ambition under the light, self-possessed air 
of assumed indifference, and see liow easily already his 
humor began to play, with that clear and sweet ripeness 
that warms some of his more famous pages, like late 
sunshine striking through clusters of mellow and trans- 



DEPAr.TING BOYHOOD. 107 

lucent grapes. Yet our grasp of his mental situation 
at this point would not be complete, without recognition 
of the graver emotions that sometimes throbbed beneath 
the surface. The doubt, the hesitancy that sometimes 
must have weighed upon his lonely, self-reliant spirit 
with weary movelessness, and all the pain of awakening 
ambition and departing boyhood, seem to find a symbol 
in this stanza from the fourth " Spectator " : — 

" Days of my youth, ye fleet away, 
As fades the bright sun's cheering ray, 
And scarce my infant hours are gone, 
Ei-e manhood's troubled step comes on. 

My infant hours return no more. 

And all their happiness is o'er ; 

The stormy sea of life appears, 

A scene of tumult and of tears." 

Of the vexations of unfledged manhood the boy of six- 
teen did not speak without knowledge. Various sorts of 
pressure from uncongenial sources were now and then 
brought to bear upon him ; there was present always the 
galling consciousness of depending on others for support, 
aud of being less self-sustaining than approaching man- 
hood made him wish to be. Allusion has been made to 
his doing writing for his uncle William. "I still con- 
tinue," he says in a letter of October, 1820, to his 
mother at Raymond, " to write for Uncle William, and 
find my salary quite convenient for many purposes." 
This, to be sure, was a first approach to self-support, 
and flattering to his sense of proper dignity. But Haw- 
thorne, in character as in genius, had a passion for ma- 
turity. An outpouring of his thoughts on this and other 
matters, directed to his sister, accompanies the letter just 
cited. Let us read it here as he wrote it more than a 
half-century ago : — 



108 PASSION FOR MATURITY. 

Dear Sister : — I am very angry with you for not sending 
me some of yom* poetry, which I consider a great piece of 
ingratitude. You will not see one line of mme until you 
return the confidence which I have placed in you. I have 
bought the ' Lord of the Isles/ and intend either to send or to 
bring it to you. I like it as well as any of Scott's other 
poems. I have read Hogg's " Tales," " Caleb Williams," " St. 
Leon," and " Mandeville." I admire Godwin's novels, and in- 
tend to read them all. I shall read the "Abbot," bj the author 
of " Waverley," as soon as I can hire it. I have read all Scott's 
novels except that. I wish 1 had not, that I might have the 
jileasure of reading them again. Next to these I like " Caleb 
Williams." I have almost given up writing poetry. No man 
can be a Poet and a book-keeper at the same time. I do find 
this place most " dismal," and have taken to chewing tobacco 
with all my might, which, I think, raises my spirits. Say 
nothing of it in your letters, nor of the " Lord of the Isles." 
.... I do not think I shall ever go to college. I can 
scarcely bear the thought of living upon Uncle Robert for 
four years longer. How happy I should be to be able to say, 
" I am Lord of myself ! " You may cut off" this part of my 
letter, and show the other to Uncle Richard. Do write me 
some letters in skimmed milk. [The shy spirit finds it thus 
hard, even thus early, to be under possible surveillance in his 
epistolary musings, and wants to write invisibly.] I must con- 
clude, as I am in a " monstrous hurry ! " 

Your affectionate brother, Nath. Hathorne. 

P. S. The most beautiful poetry I think I ever saw be- 
gins : — 

" She 's gone to dwell in Heaven, my lassie, 
She 's gone to dwell m Heaven : 
Ye 're ow're pure quo' a voice aboon 
Tor dwalling out of Heaven." 

It is not the words, but the thoughts. I hope you have read 
it, as I know you would admire it. 



CONCERNING COLLEGE. 109 

As to tlie allusion to college, it is but a single my let 
into the obscurity of a season when the sensitive, sturdy, 
proud young heart must have borne many a vigil of vexa- 
tious and bitter revery. And this must not be left out 
in reckoning the grains and scruples that were compound- 
ing themselves into his inner consciousness. But at 
last he struck a balance, wisely, among his doubts ; and 
in the fall of 1821 he went to Bowdoin to become one 
of the famous class with Longfellow and Cheever, the 
memory of which has been enwreathed with the gentle 
verse of " Morituri Salutamus," — a fadeless garland. In 
" Fanshawe," an anonymous work of his youth, Haw- 
thorne has pictured some aspects of the college at Bruns- 
wick, under a very slight veil of fiction. 

"From the exterior of the collegians," he says, "an accn- 
rate observer might pretty safely judge how long they had been 
inmates of those classic walls. The brown cheeks and the rus- 
tic dress of some would inform him that they had but recently 
left the plough, to labor in a not less toilsome field. The grave 
look and the intermingling of garments of a more classic cut 
would distinguish those who had begun to acquire the polish 
of their new residence ; and the air of superiority, the paler 
cheek, the less robust form, the spectacles of green, and the 
dress in general of threadbare black, would designate the high- 
est class, who were understood to have acquired nearly all the 
science their Alma Mater could bestow, and to be on the point 
of assuming their stations in the world. There were, it is 
true, exceptions to this general description. A few young men 
had found their way hither from the distant seaports ; and 
these were the models of fashion to their rustic companions, 
over whom they asserted a superiority in exterior accomplish- 
ments, which the fresh, though unpolished intellect of the sons 
of the forest denied them in their literary competitions. A 
third class, differing widely from both the former, consisted of 



110 A GLIMPSE OF BOWDOI^. 

a few young descendants of the ahoi'igines, to whom an imprac- 
ticable philanthropy was endeavoring to impart the benefits of 
civilization. 

" If this institution did not offer all the advantages of elder 
and prouder seminaries, its deficiencies were compensated to 
its students by the inculcation of regular habits, and of a deep 
and awft.ll sense of religion, which seldom deserted them in 
their course through life. The mild and gentle rule .... 
was more destructive to vice than a sterner sway ; and though 
youth is never without its follies, they have seldom been more 
harmless than they were here. The students, indeed, ignorant 
of their own bliss, sometimes wished to hasten the time of their 
entrance on the business of life ; but they found, in after years, 
that many of their happiest remembrances, many of the scenes 
which they would with least reluctance live over again, referred 
to the seat of their early studies." 

He here divides the honors pleasantly between the 
forest-bred and city -trained youth, having, from his own 
experience, an interest in each class. Yet I think he 
must have sided, in fact, with the country boys. Hora- 
tio Bridge, his classmate, and throughout life a more 
confidential friend than Pierce, was brought up on his 
father's estate at Bridgton, north of Sebago Lake ; and 
Franklin Pierce, in the class above him, his only other 
frequent companion, was a native of the New Hamp- 
shire hill-lands. He himself, in his outward bearing, 
perhaps gathered to his person something the look of 
both the seaport lads and the sturdy mountaineers and 
woodsmen. He was large and strong (in a letter to 
his uncle Robert, just before entering college, he gives 
the measure of his foot, for some new shoes that are to 
be sent ; it is ten inches), but an interior and ruling 
grace removed all suspicion of heaviness. Being a sca- 
captaui's son, he would naturally make his connections 



CLASSMATES AND STUDIES. Ill 

at college with men who had the out-of-doors glow about 
them; the simple and severe life at Raymond, too, had 
put him in sympathy witii the people rather than with 
the patricians (although I see that the reminiscences of 
some of the old dwellers near Raymond describe the 
widow and her brother Richard as being exclusive and 
what was there thought "aristocratic"). Hawthorne, 
Pierce, and Bridge came together in the Athensean 
Society, the newer club of the two college literary unions, 
and the more democratic ; and the trio preserved their 
cordial relations intact for forty years, sometimes amid 
confusions and misconstructions, or between cross-fires 
of troublous counter-considerations, with a rare fidelity, 
Hawthorne held eminent scholarship easily within his 
gr.isp, but he and his two cronies seem to have taken 
their curriculum very easily, though they all came off 
well in the graduation, Hawthorne was a good Latinist, 
The venerable Professor Packard has said that his Latin 
compositions, even in the Freshman year, were remark- 
able ; and Mr. Longfellow tells me that he recalls the 
graceful and poetic translations which his classmate used 
to give from the Roman authors. He got no celebrity 
in Greek, I believe, but he always kept up his liking for 
the Latin writers. Some years since a Latin theme of 
his was found, which had been delivered at an exhibition 
of the Athengean Society, in December, 1823.* It shows 
some niceties of selection, and the style is neat ; 1 even 
fancy something individual in the choice of the words 
sanctior nee beatior, as applied to the republic, and a 
distinctly Hawthornesque distinction in the fidgor tcin- 
tumfuit sine fervore ; though a relic of this kind should 
not be examined too closely, and claims the same exemp- 
tion that one gives to Shelley's school-compalled verses, 

In Eorologimi. 

* See Appendix H. 



112 LATIN AND ENGLISH. 

His English compositions also excited notice. Profes- 
sor Newman gave them liigh commendation, and Mr. 
Bridge speaks of their superiority. But none of them 
have survived; whether owing to the author's vigilant 
suppression, or to the accidents of time. It was Haw- 
thorne's habit as a young man to destroy all of his own 
letters that he could find, on returning home after an 
absence; and few records of his college life remain. 
Here is a brief note, however. 

Brunswick, Aufrust 12, 1823. 

My dear Uncle : — I received your letter in due time, and 
should have answered it in due season, if I had not been pre- 
vented, as L conjectures, by laziness. The money was 

veiy acceptable to me, and will last me till the end of the term, 
which is three weeks from next Wednesday. I shall then have 

finished one half of my college life I suppose your 

farm prospers, and I hope you will have abundance of fruit, 
and that I shall come home time enough to eat some of it, 
which I should prefer to all the pleasure of cultivating it. I 
have heard that there is a steamboat which runs twice a week 
between Portland and Boston. If this be the case 1 should 
like to come home that way, if mother has no apprehension of 
the boiler's bursting. 

I really have had a great deal to do this term, as, in addition 
to the usual exercises, we have to write a theme or essay of 
three or four pages, every fortnight, which emjiloys nearly all 
my time, so that I hope you will not impute my neglect of 

writing wholly to laziness 

Your affectionate nephew, 

Nath. Hathorne. 

This letter, as well as the others here given, shows how 
much of boyish simplicity surrounded and protected the 
rare and distinct personality already unfolded in this 
youth of eighteen. The mixture makes the charm of 



MILITARY COMPANY. 113 

Hawthorne's youth, as the union of genius and common- 
sense kept his maturity alive with a steady and whole- 
some light. I fancy that obligatory culture irked him 
then, as always, and that he chose his own green lanes 
toward the advancement of learning. His later writings 
vouchsafe only two slight glimpses of the college days. 
In his Life of Eranklin Pierce, he recalls Pierce's chair- 
mansliip of the Athensean Society, on the committee of 
which he himself held a place. " I remember, likewise," 
he says, " that the only military service of my life was as 
a private soldier in a college company, of which Pierce 
was one of the officers. He entered into this latter busi- 
ness, or pastime, with an earnestness with which 1 could 
not pretend to compete, and at whicli, perhaps, he would 
now be inclined to smile." But much more intimate and 
delightful is the reminiscence which, in the dedicatory 
preface of " The Snow Image," addressed to his friend 
Bridge, he thus calls up. "If anybody is responsible 
for my being at this day an author, it is yourself. I 
know not whence your faith came : but, while we were 
lads together at a country college, gathering blueberries 
in study hours under those tall academic pines ; or 
watching the great logs as they tumbled along the cur- 
rent of the Androscoggin ; or shooting pigeons and gray 
squirrels in the woods ; or bat-fowling in the summer 
twilight ; or catching trouts in that shadowy little stream, 
which, I suppose, is still wandering riverward through 
the forest, — though you and I will never cast a line in it 
again, — two idle lads, in short (as we need not fear to 
acknowledge now), doing a hundred things that the Fac- 
ulty never heard of, or else it had been the worse for us, 
— still it was your prognostic of your friend's destiny, 
that he was to be a writer of fiction." I have asked Mr. 
Bridge what gave him this impression of Hawthorne, 

H 



114 FIEST PROPHECY OF HIS FUTURE. 

and lie tells me that it was an indescribable conviction, 
aroused by the whole drift of his friend's mind as he saw 
it. Exquisite indeed must have been that first fleeting 
aroma of genius ; and 1 would that it might have been 
then and there imprisoned and perpetuated for our de- 
light. But we must be satisfied with the quick and sym- 
pathetic insight with which Hawthorne's friend discov- 
ered his true bent. The world owes more, probably, to 
this early encouragement from a college companion than 
it can ever estimate. 

Nothing in human intercourse, I think, has a more 
peculiar and unchanging value than the mutual impres- 
sions of young men at college : they m.eet at a moment 
when the full meaning of life just begins to unfold itself 
to them, and their fresh imaginations build upon two or 
three traits the whole character of a comrade, where a 
maturer man weighs and waits, doubts and trusts, and 
ends after all with a like or dislike that is only luke- 
warm. Far on toward the close of life, Hawthorne, in 
speaking of something told him by an English gentleman 
respecting a former classmate of the latter' s, wrote : 
"It seemed to be one of those early impressions which 
a colles-ian srets of his fellow-students, and wliich he 
never gets rid of, whatever the character of tlie person 
may turn out to be in after years. I have judged 
several persons in this way, and still judge them so, 
though the world has come to very diff'erent opinions. 
Which is right, — the world, which has the man's whole 
mature life on its side ; or his early companion, who has 
nothing for it but some idle passages of his youth?" 
The world, doubtless, measures more accurately the 
intrinsic worth of the man's mature actions ; but his 
essential characteristics, creditable or otherwise, are very 
likely to be bstter understood by his classmates. In 



LEARNING CHARACTEIl. 115 

this, tlien, we perceive one of tlie formative effects on 
Hawthorne's mind of his stay at Brunswick. Those 
four years of student life gave him a tliousand eyes for 
observing and analyzing cliaracter. He learned then, 
also, to choose men on principles of his own. Always 
afterward he was singularly independent in selecting 
friends ; often finding thein even in unpopular and 
out-of-the-way persons. The afiiuity betwceu himself 
and Bridge was ratified by forty years of close confi- 
dence; and. Hawthorne never swerved from his early loy- 
alty to Pierce, though his faitlifulness gave him severe 
trials, both public and private, afterward. I am not 
of those who explain this steadfastness by a theory 
of early prepossession on Hawthorne's part, bUndiiig 
liim to Pierce's errors or defects. There is ample proof 
in the correspondence between Bridge and himself, whicli 
I have seen, that he constantly and closely scanned his 
distinguished friend the President's character with liis 
impartial and searching eye for human character, what- 
soever its relations to himself. I believe if he had 
ever found that the original nucleus of honor and of a 
certain candor which had charmed him in Pierce was 
gone, he would, provided it seemed his duty, have reject- 
ed the friendship. As it was, he saw his old friend and 
comrade undergoing changes which he himself thought 
hazardous, saw him criticised in a post where no one 
ever escaped the severest criticism, and beheld liim re- 
turn to private life amid unpopularity, founded, as he 
thought, upon misinterpretation of what was perhaps er- 
ror, but not dishonesty. Meanwhile he felt that the old 
"Prank," his brother through Alma Mater, dwelt still 
within the person of the public man ; and though to 
claim that brotherhood exposed Hawthorne, under the 
circumstances, to cruel and vulgar insinuations, he saw 



116 FIRST PUBLICATION. 

tliat duty led liim to the side of his friend, not to that of 
the harsh mukitude. 

Perhaps his very earliest contribution to light litera- 
ture was an apocryphal article which he is said to have 
written when about eighteen or nineteen. Just then there 
came into notice a voracious insect, gifted with peculiar 
powers against pear-trees, Knownig that his uncle was 
especially concerned in fruit culture, Hawthorne wrote, and 
sent from college to a Boston paper, a careful description 
of the new destroyer, his habits, and the proper mode of 
combating him, all drawn from his own imagination. It 
was printed, so the tale runs; and a package of the papers 
containing it arrived in Salem just as the author reached 
there for a brief vacation. Mr. Manning is said to have 
accepted in good faith the knowledge which the article 
supplied, but Hawthorne's amusement was not unmixed 
with consternation at the success of his first essay. 

In the two or three letters from him at college which 
still survive, there is no open avowal of the inner life, 
which was then the supplier of events for his outwardly 
monotonous days ; not a breath of that strain of revery 
and fancy which impressed Bridge's mhid ! One allu- 
sion sliows that he systematically omitted declamation ; 
and an old term bill of 1824 (the last year of his course) 
charges him with a fine of twenty cents for neglect of 
theme! Spur to authorship: — the Faculty surely did 
its best to develop his genius, and cannot be blamed for 
any shortcomings.* Logically, these tendencies aM^ay 

* The amount of this bill, for the term ending May 21, 
1824, is but $ 19.62, of which $ 2.36 is made up of fines. The 
figures give a backward glimpse at the epoch of cheap living, 
but show that the disinclination of students to comply with 
college rules was even then expensive. The " average of dam- 
ages " is only thirty-three cents, from which I infer that the 
class was not a destructive one. 



FINES AND CAP^D-PLAYTNG. 117 

from essay and oratory are alien to minds destined to 
produce literature ; but empirically, they are otherwise. 
Meantime, we get a sudden light on some of the solid 
points of character, apart from genius, in this note from 
the college president, and the student's parallel epistles. 

May 29, 1822. 
Mus. Elizabeth C. Hathorne. 

Madam : — By note of the Executive Government of this 
college, it is made my duty to request your co-operation with us 
iu the attempt to induce your son faithfully to ohserve the laws 
of this institution. He was this day fiued fifty cents for play- 
ing cards for money, last term. He played at different times. 
Perhaps he might not have gamed, Avere it not for the influence 
of a student whom we have dismissed from college. It does 
not appear that your son has very recently played cards ; yet 
your advice may he beneficial to him. I am, madam. 
Very respectfully, 

Your obedient, humble servant, 

William Allen, President. 

The next day after this note was written (on May 
30, 1822) the subject of it wrote thus : — 

" My dear MoTFEii : — I hope you have safely arrived in 
Salem. I have nothing particular to inform you of, except that 
all the card-players in college have been found out, and my 
unfortunate self among the number. One has been dismissed 
from college, two suspended, and the rest, with myself, have 
been fiued fifty cents each. I believe the President intends to 
write to the friends of all the delinquents. Should that be the 
case, you must show the letter to nobody. If I am again de- 
tected, I shall have the honor of being suspended ; when the 
President asked what we played for, T thought it proper to 
inform him it was fifty cents, although it happened to be a 
quart of wine ; but if I had told him of that, he would probably 



118 HAWTHORNE'S ACCOUNT OF THIS. 

have fined me for having a Mow. [It appears that the mild 
dissipation of wine-drinking in vogue at Bowdoin at that time 
was called having a " blow " ; probably an abbreviation for the 
common term "blow-out," applied to entertainments.] There 
was no untruth in the case, as the wine cost fifty cents. 
I have not played at all this term. I liave not drank any 
kind of spirits or wine this term, and shall not till the last 
week." 

But in a letter to one of his sisters (dated August 5, 
1822) a few months afterward, he touches the matter 
much more vigorously : — 

" To quiet your suspicions, I can assure you that I am nei- 
ther ' dead, absconded, or anything worse.' [The allusion is to 
some reproach for a long silence on his part.] I have involved 
myself in no ' foolish scrape,' as you say all my friends sup- 
pose ; but ever since my misfortune 1 have been as steady as 
a sign-post, and as sober as a deacon, have been in no 
'blows' this term, nor drank any kind of 'wine or strong 
drink.' So that your comparison of me to the ' prodigious 
son ' will hold good in nothing, except that I shall proba- 
bly return penniless, for I have had no money this six 

weeks The President's message is not so severe as I 

expected. I perceive that he thinks I have been led away by 
the wicked ones, in which, however, he is greatly mistaken. I 
was full as willing to play as the person he suspects of having 
enticed me, and would have been influenced by no one. I have 
a great mind to commence playing again, merely to shoAV 
him that I scorn to be seduced by another into anything 
wrong." 

I cannot hut emphasize with my own words the manly, 
clear-lieaded attitude of tlie young student in these re- 
marks. He has evidently made up liis mind to test the 
value of card-playing for wine, and thinks himself — as 



LETTERS FROM COLLEGE. 119 

his will be tlie injury, if any — the best judge of the wis- 
dom of that experiment. A weaker spirit, too, a person 
who knew himself less thoroughly, would have taken 
shelter under the President's charitable theory with 
thanksgiving; but Hawthorne's perfectly simple moral 
sense and ingrained manhood would not let him forget 
that self-respect lives by truth alone. In this same letter 
he touches lesser affairs : — ■ 

" I have not read the two novels you mention. I began 
some time ago to read Hmne's ' History of England,' but 
found it so abominably dull that I have given up the under- 
taking until some future time. I can procure books of all sorts 
from the library of the Athensean Society, of which I am a 
member. The library consists of about eight hundred volumes, 
among which is Rees's Cyclopaedia [this work was completed 

in 1819], and many other valuable works Our class will 

be examined on Tuesday for admittance to om' Sophomore year. 
If any of us are found deficient, we shall be degraded to the 
Freshman class again; from which misfortune may Heaven 
defend me." 

But the young Freshman's trepidation, if he really felt 
any, was soon soothed ; he passed on successfully through 
his course. Not only did he graduate well, but he had 
also, as we shall see, begun to prepare himself for his 
career. Here is a letter which gives, in a fragmentary 
way, his mood at graduation : — 

" Brunswick, July 14, 1825. 
" My dear Sister : — .... I am not very well pleased with 
Mr. Dike's report of me. The family had before conceived much 
too high an opinion of my talents, and had probably formed 
expectations which I shall never realize. I have thought much 
upon the subject, and have finally come to the conclusion that 
1 shall never make a distinguished figure in the world, and all 



120 GRADUATION. 

I hope or wisL. is to plod along with the multitude, I do not 
saj^ this for the purpose of drawing any flattery from you, but 
merely to set mother and the rest of you right upon a point 
where your partiality has led you astray. I did hope that 
Uncle Robert's opinion of me was nearer to the truth, as his 
deportment toward me never expressed a very high estimation 
of my abilities." 

Mr. Dike was a relative, who Lad probably gone back 
to Salem, after seeing the young man at Brunswick, with 
a eulogy on his lips. Hawthorne's modesty held too 
delicate a poise to bear a hint of praise, before he had 
yet been put to the test or accomplished anything de- 
cisive. In some ways this modesty and shyness may 
liave postponed his success as an author ; yet it was this 
same delicate admixture which precipitated and made 
perfect the mysterious solution in which his genius lay. 
The wish " to plod along with the multitude," seemingly 
unambitious, is only a veil. The hearts that burn most 
undyingly with hope of achievement in art, often throw 
off this vapor of discontent; they feel a prophetic thrill 
of that nameless suffering through which every seeker 
of truth must pass, and they long beforehand for rest, 
for the sweet obscurity of the ungifted. 

Anol her part of this letter shows the writer's standing 
at college : — 

"Did the President write to yoii about my part? He 
called me to his study, and informed me that, though my rank 
in the class entitled me to a part, yet it was contrary to the 
law to give me one, on account of my neglect of declamation. 
As he inquired mother's name and residence, 1 suppose that he 
intended to write to her on the subject. If so, you will send 
me a copy of the letter. I am perfectly satisfied with this ar- 
rangement, as it is a sufficient testimonial to my scholarship. 



THE DEE AM OF FAME. 121 

wbile it saves me the mortification of making my appearance 
in public at Commencement. Perhaps the family may not he 
so much pleased by it. Tell me what are their sentiments on 
the subject. 

" I shall return home in three weeks from next Wednesday." 

Here the dim record of his collegiate days ceases, leav- 
ing him on the threshold of the world, a fair scholar, a 
budding genius, strong, young, and true, yet hesitant ; 
halting for years, as if gathering all his shy-souled cour- 
age, before entering that arena that was to echo such 
long applause of him. Yet doubt not tliat the purpose 
to do some great thing was ali'eady a part of his life, 
together with that longing for recognition which every 
young poet, in the sweet uncertain certainty of beginning, 
feels that he must some day deserve. Were not these 
words, which 1 find in " Fanshawe," drawn from the 
author's knowledge of his own heart ? 

" He called up the years that, even at his early age, he had 
spent in solitary study, — ■ in conversation with the dead, -^ while 
he had scorned to mingle with the living world, or to be actu- 
ated by any of its motives. Fanshawe had hitherto deemed 
himself unconnected with the world, unconcerned in its feelings, 
and uninfluenced by it in any of his pursuits. In this respect 
he probably deceived himself. If his inmost heart could have 
been laid open, there would have been discovered that dream of 
undying fame, which, dream as it is, is more powerful than a 
thousand realities." 

Already, while at Bowdoin, Hawtliorne had begun to 
write verses, and perliaps to print some of them anony- 
mously in the newspapers. From some forgotten poem 
of his on the sea, a single stanza has drifted down to us, 
like a bit of beacli-wood, the relic of a bark too frail to 
last. It is this : — 
6 



122 EARLY POETRY. 

" The ocean hatli its silent caves. 
Deep, quiet, and alone ; 
Though there he fury on the waves. 
Beneath them there is none." 

If one lets the lines ring in his ears a little, the true 
Hawthoruesque murmur and half-mournful cadence be- 
come clear. I am told, by the way, that when the Atlan- 
tic cable was to be laid, some one quoted this to a near 
relative of the writer's, not remembering the name of 
the author, but thinking it conclusive proof that the 
ocean depths would receive the cable securely. An- 
other piece is preserved complete, and much more, 
nearly does the writer justice: — 

"MOONLIGHT. 

" We are beneath the dark blue sky, 
And the moon is shining bright ; 
O, what can lift the soul so high 

As the glow of a summer night ; 
When all the gay are hushed to sleej) 
And they that mourn forget to weep. 
Beneath that gentle light ! 

" Is there no holier, happier land 

Among those distant spheres, 
W^here we may meet that shadow band. 

The dead of other years ? 
Where all the day the moonbeams rest, 
And where at length the souls are blest 

Of those who dwell in tears ? 

" O, if the happy ever leave 

The bowers of bliss on high, 
To cheer the hearts of those that grieve, 



LONGFELLO\rS FIRST VERSES. 123 

And wipe the tear-drop dry ; 
It is wlieu moonlight sheds its ray. 
More pure and beautiful than day. 

And earth is like the sky." 

At a time when the taste and manner of Pope In poetry 
still held such strong rule over readers as it did in the 
first quarter of the century, these simple stanzas would 
not have been unwortiiy of praise for a certain inde- 
pendence ; but there is something besides in the refined 
touch and the plaintive undertone that belong to Haw- 
thorne's individuality. Tliis gentle and musical poem, it 
is curious to remember, was written at the very period 
when Longfellow was singing his first fresh carols, full 
of a vigorous pleasure in the beauty and inspiration of 
nature, with a rising and a dying fall for April and 
Autumn, and the Winter Woods. One can easily fancy 
that in these two lines from " Sunrise on the Hills " : — 

" Where, answering to the sudden shot, thin smoke 

Through thick-leaved branches from the dingle broke," 

it was the fire of Hawthorne's fowling-piece in the woods 
that attracted the young poet, from his lookout above. 
But Longfellow had felt in the rhythm of these earliest 
poems the tide-flow of his future, and Hawtliorne had as 
yet hardly found his appropriate "element. 

In IS 28, however, three years after graduating, lie 
published an anonymous prose romance called "Fan- 
shawe," much more nearly approaching a novel than his 
later books. It was issued at Boston, by Marsh and 
Capen ; but so successful was Hawthorne in his attempt 
to exterminate the edition, that not lialf a dozen copies 
are now known to be extant. We have seen that he 
read and admired Godwin and Scott, as a boy. " Kcnil- 



1*24 SCOTLAND AND NEW ENGLAND. 

wortli," "The Pirate," "The Tortunes of Nigel," "Pev- 
eril of the Peal-:," " Quentiii Durwarcl," and others of 
Scott's novels had appeared while Hawthorne was at 
Bowdoin ; and tlie author of " Waverley " had become 
the autocrat of fiction. In addition to this, there is an. 
inbred analogy between Incw England and Scotland. In 
the history and character of tlie people of each country 
are seen the influence of Calvin, and of a common-school 
system. Popular education was ingrafted upon the pol- 
icy of both states at about tlie same period, and in both 
it has liad the same result, making of the farming-class 
a body of energetic, thrifty, intelligent, and aspiring peo- 
ple. Scotland and New England alike owe some of their 
best as well as their least attractive traits to bitter cli- 
mate and a parsimonious soil ; and the rural population 
of either is pushed into emigration by the scanty harvests 
at home. It is not a little singular that the Yankee and 
the canny Scot should each stand as a butt for the wit 
of his neighbors, while each has a shrewdness all his 
own. The Scotch, it is true, are said to be unusually 
impervious to a joke, while our Down-Easters are per- 
liaps the most recondite and many-sided of American 
humorists. And, though many of tlie conditions of the 
two regions are alike, the temperaments of the two races 
are of course largely dissimilar. The most salient dis- 
tinction, perhaps, is that of the Scotch being a musical 
and dancing nation ; something from which the New- 
Englanders are fatally far removed. As if to link him 
with his Puritan ancestry and stamp him beyond mistake 
as a Pilgrim and not a Covenanter, Hawthorne was by 
nature formed with little ear for music. It seems strange 
that a man who could inform the verses on "Moonlight," 
just quoted, with so delicate a melody, and never admit- 
ted an ill-timed strain or jarring cadence into his pure, 



hawthohne's love of song. 125 

symplioiiious prose, should scarcely be able to distin- 
guish one tune from another. Yet such was the case. 
But this was owiug merely to the absence of the musical 
instinct. He would listen with rapture to the unaccom- 
panied voice ; and I have been always much touched by 
a little incident recorded in the " Ensrlish Note-Books " : 
" There is a woman who has several times passed through 
tliis Hanover Street in which we live, stopping occasion- 
ally to sing songs under the windows ; and last even- 
ing . . . she came and sang 'Kathleen O'Moore' riclily 
and sweetly. Her voice rose up out of the dim, chill 
street, and made our hearts tlirob in unison with it as 
we sat in our comfortable drawing-room. I never heard 
a voice that touched me more deeply. Somebody told 
her to go awa}^, and she stopped like, a nightingale sud- 
denly shot." Hawthorne goes on to speak ^vith won- 
der of the waste of such a voice, " making even an un- 
susceptible heart vibrate like a harp-string"; audit is 
pleasant to know that Mrs. Hawthorne had the woman 
called within, from the street. So that his soul was open 
to sound. But the unmusicalness of New England, less 
marked now than formerly, is only a symbol, perhaps, — ■ 
grievous tliat it should be so ! — of the superior temper- 
ance of our race. For, by one of those strange oversights 
that human nature is guilty of, Scotland, in opening the 
door for song and dance and all the merry crew of mirth, 
seems to admit quite freely two vagabonds tliat have no 
business there. Squalor and Drunkenness. Yet notwith- 
standing this grave unlikeness between tlie two peoples, 
Hawthorne seems to have found a connecting clew, albeit 
unwittingly, when he remarked, as he did, on his first visit 
to Glasgow, that in spite of the poorer classes there ex- 
celhng even those of Liverpool in filth and drunkenness, 
" they are a better looking people than the English (and 



126 HAWTHORNE AND SCOTT. 

tliis is true of all classes), more intelligent of aspect, with 
more regular features." There is certainly one quality- 
linking the two nations together which has not yet been 
commented on, in relation to Hawthorne ; and this is the 
natural growth of the weird in the popular mind, both 
here and in Scotland. It is not needful to enter into this 
at all at length. In the chapter on Salem I have sug- 
gested some of the immediate factors of the weird ele- 
ment in Hawthorne's fiction; but it deserves remark 
that only Scott and Hawthorne, besides George Sand, 
among modern novelists, have used the supernatural with 
real skill and force ; and Hawthorne lias certainly infused 
it into his work by a more subtle and sympathetic gift 
than even the magic-loving Scotch romancer owned. 
After this digressive prelude, the reader will be ready to 
hear me announce that "Eanshawe" was a faint reflec- 
tion from the young Salem recluse's mind of certain rays 
thrown across the Atlantic from Abbotsford. But this 
needs qualification. 

Hawthorne indeed admired Scott, when a youth ; and 
after he had returned from abroad, in 1860, he fulfilled a 
tender purpose, formed on a visit to Abbotsford, of re- 
reading all the Waverley novels. Yet he had long before 
arrived at a ripe, unprejudiced judgment concerning him. 
The exact impression of his feeling appears in that delight- 
fully humorous whimsey, " P.'s Correspondence," which 
contains the essence of the best criticism.* In allusion 
to Abbotsford, Scott, he says, " whether in verse, prose, 
or architecture, could achieve but one thing, although 
that one in infinite variety." And lie adds : " For my 
part, I can hardly regret that Sir Walter Scott had lost 
his consciousness of outward things before his works 

* See Mosses from an Old INIansc, Vol. II. 



"fanshawe." 127 

went out of vogue. It was good that lie should forget 
liis fame, rather than that fame should first have for- 
gotten him. Were he still a writer, and as brilliant a 
one as ever, he could no longer maintain anything like 
the same position in literature. The world, nowadays, 
requires a more earnest purpose, a deeper moral, and a 
closer and homelier truth than he was qualified to sup- 
ply it with. Yet who can be to the present generation 
even what Scott has been to the past ? " Now, in 
"Eanshawe" there is something that reminds one of 
Sir Walter ; but the very resemblance makes the essen- 
tial unlikeness more apparent. 

The scene of the tale is laid at Harley College, " in an 
ancient, though not very populous settlement in a retired 
corner of one of the New England States." This, no 
doubt, is a reproduction of Bowdoin. Mr. Longfellow 
tells me that the descriptions of the seminary and of the 
country around it strongly suggest the Brunswick Col- 
lege. The President of Harley is a Dr. Melmoth, an 
amiable and simple old delver in learning, in a general 
way recalling Dominie Sampson, whose vigorous spouse 
rules him somewhat severely : their little bickerings sup- 
ply a strain of farce indigenous to Scott's fictions, but 
quite unlike anything in Hawthorne's later work. A 
young lady, named Ellen Langton, daughter of an old 
friend of Dr. Melmoth's, is sent to Harley, to stay under 
his guardianship. Ellen is somewhat vaguely sketched, 
in the style of Scott's heroines ; but this sentence ends 
with a trace of the young writer's quaUty : " If pen 
could give an adequate idea of Ellen Langton's beauty, 
it would achieve what pencil .... never could ; for 
though the dark eyes might be painted, the pure and 
pleasant thoughts that peeped through 1 hem could only 
be seen and felt." This maiden the ductor once took into 



128 THE PLOT. 

his study, to begin a course of modern languages with 
her ; but she " liaving discovered an old romance among 
his heavy folios, contrived by the sweet charm of her 
voice to engage his attention," and quite beguiled him 
from severer studies. Naturally, she inthralls two young 
students at the college : one of whom is Edward Wolcott, 
a wealthy, handsome, generous, healthy young fellow from 
one of the seaport towns ; and the other, Tanshawe, the 
hero, who is a poor but ambitious recluse, already pass- 
ing into a decline through overmuch devotion to books 
and meditation. Fanshawe, though the deeper nature of 
the two, and intensely moved by his new^ passion, per- 
ceiving that a union between himself and Ellen could not 
be a happy one, resigns the hope of it from the begin- 
ning. But circumstances bring him into intimate relation 
with her. The real action of the book, after the pre- 
liminaries, takes up only some three days, and turas upon 
tlie attempt of a man named Butler to entice Ellen away 
under his protection, then marry her, and secure the for- 
tune to which she is heiress. This scheme is partly 
frustrated by circumstances, and Butler's purpose towards 
Ellen then becomes a much more sinister one. Erom 
this she is rescued by Fanshawe ; and, knowing that he 
loves her, but is concealing his passion, she gives him 
the opportunity and the right to claim her hand. Eor a 
moment, the rush of desire and hope is so great that he 
hesitates ; then he refuses to take advantage of her gen- 
erosity, and parts with her for the last time. Ellen be- 
comes engaged to Wolcott, who had won her heart from 
the first ; and Eanshawe, sinking into rapid consumption, 
dies before his class graduates. It is easy to see how 
the sources of emotion thus opened attracted Hawthorne. 
The noble and refined nature of Eanshawe, and the niin- 
glecl craftiness, remorse, and ferocity of Butler, are crude 



A HUMOROUS PASSAGE. 129 

embodiments of the same cliaracteristlcs wliicli he after- 
ward treated in modified forms. They are the two poles, 
tlie extremes, — both of them remote and chill}^ — of 
good and evil, from which the writer withdrew, after 
exploring them, into more temperate regions. The move- 
ment of these persons is visionary, and their personality 
faint. But I have marked a few characteristic portions 
of the book which suggest its tone. 

When the young lady's flight with the stranger actu- 
ally takes place, young Wolcott and President Melmofli 
ride together in the pursuit, and at this point there 
occurs a dialogue which is certainly as laughable and is 
better condensed than most similar passages in Scott, 
whom it strongly recalls. A hint of Cervantes appears 
in it, too, which makes it not out of place to mention 
that Hawthorne studied " Don Quixote " in the original, 
soon after leaving college. 

" ' Alas, youth ! these are strange times,' observed the 
President, ' when a doctor of divinity and an undergraduate 
set forth like a knight-errant and his squire, in search of a 
stray damsel. Methinks I am an epitome of the chui-ch mili- 
tant, or a new species of polemical divinity. Pray Heaven, 
however, there be no encounter in store for us ; for I utterly 
forgot to provide myself with weapons.' 

" ' I took some thought for that matter, reverend knight,' 
replied Edward, whose imagination was highly tickled by Dr. 
Melmoth's chivalrous comparison. 

" ' Ay, I see that you have girded on a sword,' said the 
divine. 'But wherewith shall I defend myself? — my hand 
being empty except of this golden-headed staff, the gift of Mr. 
Langton.' 

" ' One of those, if you will accept it,' answered Edward, ex- 
hibiting a brace of pistols, ' will serve to begin the conflict, 
before you join the battle hand to hand.' 

6* I 



130 A TUAGIC BTTHST. 

" ' Nay, I shall find little safety in meddling with that deadly 
insti'ument, since I know not accurately from which end pro- 
ceeds the bullet/ said Dr. IMelmoth. ' JBut were it not better, 
seeing we are so Avell jn-ovided with artillery, to betake our- 
selves, in the event of an encounter, to some stone-wall or other 
place of strength ? ' 

" ' If I may presume to advise,' said the squire, ' you, as 
being most valiant and experienced, should ride forward, lance 
in hand (your long staff serving for a lance), while I annoy the 
enemy from afar.' 

" ' Like Teucer behind the shield of Ajax,' interrupted Dr. 
Melmoth, ' or David with his stone and sling. No, no, young 
man ; 1 have left unfinished in my study a learned treatise, 
important not only to the present age, but to posterity, for 
whose sakes I must take heed to my safety. But lo ! who 
rides yonder ? ' " 

In one place only does the author give full rein to his 
tragic power ; but this is a vigorous burst, and remarka- 
ble also for its sure and trenchant analysis. During his 
escape with Ellen, Butler is moved to stop at a lonely 
liut inhabited by his mother, where he finds her djiug ; 
and, torn by the sight of her suffering while she raves and 
yearns for his presence, he makes himself known to her. 

" At that unforgotten voice, the darkness burst away at once 
from her soul. She arose in bed, her eyes and her whole coun- 
tenance beaming with joy, and threw her arms about his neck. 
A multitude of words seem struggling for utterance ; but they 
gave place to a low moaning sound, and then to the silence of 
death. The one moment of happiness, that recompensed years 

of sorrow, had been her last As he [Butler] looked, 

the expression of enthnsiastic joy that parting life had left upon 
the features faded gradually away, and the countenance, though 
no longer wild, assumed the sadness which it had worn through 
a long course of grief and pain. On beholding this natm-al 



QUAINTNESSES. 131 

consequence of death, the thought perhaps occurred to him 
that her soul, no longer dependent on the imperfect means of 
intercourse possessed hy mortals, had conmiuned with his own, 
and hecome acquainted with all its guilt and misery. He 
started from the hedside and covered his face with his hands, 
as if to hide it from those dead eyes But his deep re- 
pentance for the misery he had hrought upon his parent did 
not produce in him a resolution to do w^rong no more. The 
sudden consciousness of accumulated guilt made him desperate. 
He felt as if no oue had thenceforth a claim to justice or com- 
passion at his hands, when his neglect and cruelty had poisoned 
his mother's life, and hastened her death." 

What separates this story from the rest of Hawthorne*s 
works is an intricate plot, with passages of open humor, 
and a rather melodramatic tone in the conclusion. These 
are the result in part of the prevalent fashion of romance, 
and in part of a desire to produce effects not quite con- 
sonant with his native bent. -The choice of the title, 
"Eanshawe," too, seems to show a deference to the 
then prevalent taste for brief and quaint-sounding names ; 
and the motto, " Wilt thou go on with me ? " from 
Southey, placed on his title-page, together with quota- 
tions at the heads of chapters, belongs to a past fashion. 
Panshawe and Butler are powerful conceptions, but they 
are so purely embodiments of passion as to assume an 
air of unreality. Butler is like an evil wraitli, and I'an- 
shawe is as evanescent as a sad cloud in the sky, touched 
with the first pale light of morning. Panshawe, with his 
pure heart and high resolves, represents that constant as- 
piration toward lofty moral truth which marked Haw- 
thorne's own mind, and Butler is a crude example of the 
sinful spirit which he afterward analyzed under many 
forms. The verbal style has few marks of the maturer 
mould afterward impressed on it, except that there is the 



13:2 THAITS OF STYLE. 

preference always noticeable in Hawthorne for Latin word- 
ing. Two or three phrases, however, sliow all the lira- 
pidness and ease for which he gained fame subsequently. 
Eor instance, when Fanshawe is first surprised by his love 
for Ellen, he returns to his room to study : " The books 
were around him whicii had hitherto been to him like 
those fabled volumes of magic, from which the reader 
could not turn away his eye, till death were the conse- 
quence of his studies." This, too, is a pretty description 
of Ellen : " Terror had at first blanched her as white as a 

lil}'' Shame next bore sway; and her blushing 

countenance, covered by her slender white fingers, might 
fantastically be compared to a variegated rose, .As^ith its 
alternate stripes of white and red." Its restraint is per- 
haps the most remarkable trait of the novel ; for though 
this comes of timidity, it shows that Hawthorne, whether 
this be to his advantage or not, was not of the order of 
young genius which begins with tumid and excessive ex- 
hibition of power. His early acquaintance with books, 
breeding a respect for literary form, his shy, considerate 
modes of dealing with any intellectual problem or ques- 
tion requiring judgment, and the formal taste of the 
period in letters, probably conspired to this end. 



IV. 



TWILIGHT OF THE TWICE-TOLD TALES. 



1828-1838. 




E have now readied tlie point where the con- 
cealed foundations of Hawthorne's life termi- 
nate, and the final structure begins to appear 
above the surface, like the topmost portion of a coral 
island slowly rising from the depths of a solitary ocean. 

When he left college, his friends Cilley and Pierce 
entered into law, the gateway to politics ; Bridge re- 
turned to his father's estate at Bridgton, to engage later 
in a large enterprise there ; and other classmates took 
up various activities in the midst of otlier men ; but for 
Hawthorne no very clear path presented itself. Litera- 
ture had not yet attained, in the United States, the rank 
of a distinct and powerful profession. Fifteen years 
before, Brockden Brown had died prematurely after a 
hapless struggle, worn out with overwork, — tlie first man 
who had undertaken to live by writing in this country 
since its colonization. " The North American Review," 
indeed, in Boston, was laying the corner-stone of a vigor- 
ous periodical literature; and in tliis year of 1825 Wil- 
liam Cullen Bryant had gone to New York to edit " Tlie 
New York 'Review," after publishing at Cambridge his 
first volume of poetry, " The Ages." Irving was an an- 



134 THE "SEVEN TALES." 

tlior of recent but established fame, who was drawing 
chiefly from the rich supplies of Europe'an manners, le- 
gend, and history ; while Cooper, in his pleasant Pioneer- 
land beside Otsego Lake, had begun to make clear his claim 
to a wide domain of native and national fiction. But to a 
young man of reserved temper, having few or no friends 
directly connected with publication, and living in a som- 
bre, old-fashioned town, isolated as all like towns were 
before the era of railroads, the avenue to publicity and a 
definite literary career was dark and devious enough. 

I suppose it was after his venture of " Eanshawe," 
that he set about the composition of some shorter stories 
which he called " Seven Tales of my Native Land." * 
His sister, to whom he read these, has told me tliat they 
were very beauUful, but no definite recollection of them 
remains to her, except that some of them related to 
witchcraft, and some to the sea, being stories of pirates 
and privateers. In one of these latter were certain verses, 
beginning, — 

"The pirates of the sea, they were a fearful race." 

Hawthorne has described in " The Devil in Manuscript," 
while depicting a young author about to destroy his 
manuscript, his own vexations in trying to find a pub- 
lisher for these attempts. "They have been oifered to 
some seventeen booksellers. It would make you stare 

to read their answers One man publishes nothing 

but school-books ; another has five novels already under 
examination ; . . . . another gentleman is just giving up 
business on purpose, I verily believe, to escape publisli- 
ing my book In short, of all the seventeen book- 
sellers, only one has vouchsafed even to read my tales ; 

* The motto prefixed to these was, " We are seven." 



THEIR DESTRUCTION. 135 

and he — a literary dabbler himself, I should judge — has 
the impertiueiice to criticise them, proposing what he 
calls vast improvements, and concluding .... that he 

will not be concerned on any terms But there 

does seem to be one honest man among these seventeen 
unrighteous ones ; and he tells me fairly that no Ameri- 
can publisher will meddle with an American work, seldom 
if by a known writer, and never if by a new one, unless 
at the writer's risk." He indeed had the most discourag- 
ing sort of search for a publisher ; but at last a young 
printer of Salem promised to undertake the work. His 
name was Ferdinand Andrews ; and he was at one time 
half-owner w^ith Caleb Cushinsr of an establishment from 
which they issued " The Salem Gazette," in 1822, the 
same journal in which Hawthorne published various pa- 
pers at a later date, when Mr. Caleb Foote was its editor. 
Andrews was ambitious, and evidently appreciative of his 
young townsman's genius ; but he delayed issuing the 
" Seven Tales " so long that the author, exasperated, re- 
called the manuscript. Andrews, waiting only for better 
business prospects, was loath to let them go ; but Haw- 
thorne insisted, and at last the publisher sent word, " Mr. 
Hawthorne's manuscript awaits his orders." The writer 
received it and burned it, to the chagrin of Andrews, who 
had hoped to bring out many works by the same hand. 

This, at the time, must have been an incident of incal- 
culable and depressing importance to Hawthorne, and 
the intense emotion it caused may be guessed from the 
utterances of the young writer in the sketch just alluded 
to, though he has there veiled the affair in a light film of 
sarcasm. The hero of that scene is called Oberon, one 
of the feigned names which Hawthorne himself used at 
times in contributing to periodicals. " ' What is more 
potent than fire ! ' said he, in his gloomiest tone. 



136 CONCEPTION OF A FIEND. 

* Even thought, invisible and incorporeal as it is, cannot 

escape it All that I had accomplished, all that I 

planned for future years, has perished by one common 
ruin, and left only this heap of embers ! The deed has 
been ray fate. And what remains ? A weary and aimless 
life ; a long repentance of this hour ; and at last an ob- 
scure grave, where tliey will bury and forget me ! ' " 
There is also an allusion to the tales founded on witch- 
craft : " I could believe, if I chose," says Oberon, 
*' that there is a devil in this pile of blotted papers. 
You have read them, and know what I mean, — that con- 
ception in which I endeavored to embody the character 
of a fiend, as represented in our traditions and the writ- 
ten records of witchcraft. 0, I have a horror of what 
was created in my own brain, and shudder at the manu- 
scripts in which I gave that dark idea a sort of material 
existence ! ' You remember how the hellish thing used 
to suck away the happiness of those who .... sub- 
jected themselves to his power." This is curious, as 
showing the point from which Hawthorne had resolved to 
treat the theme. He had instinctively perceived that the 
only way to make the witclicraft delusion available in fic- 
tion was to accept the witch as a fact, an actual being, 
and expend his art upon developing the abnormal char- 
acter; while other writers, who have attempted to use 
the subject for romantic ends, have uniformly taken the 
historical view, and sought to extract their pathos from 
the effect of the delusion on innocent persons. The his- 
torical view is that of intelligent criticism ; but Haw- 
thorne's effort was the harbinger and token of an origi- 
nal imagination. , 

After the publication of " Eanshawe " and the destruc- 
tion of his " Seven Tales," Hawthorne found himself ad- 
vanced not so much as by a single footstep on the road 



A HALT IN THE CAREER. 137 

to fame. " Fame ! " he exclaims, in meditation ; *' some 
very humble persons in a town may be said to possess it, 
— as the penny-post, the town-crier, the constable, — • 
and they are known to everybody; while many richer, 
more intellectual, worthier persons are unknown by the 
majority of their fellow-citizens." But the fame that he 
desired was, I think, only that which is the recognition 
by the public that a man is on the way to truth. An 
outside acknowledgment of this is invaluable even to the 
least vain of authors, because it assures him that, in fol- 
lowing his own inner impulse through every doubt and 
discouragement, he has not been pursuing a chimera, and 
gives him new heart for the highest enterprises of which 
he is capable. To attain this, amid the peculiar sur- 
roundings of his life, was difficult enough. At that time, 
Salem society was more peculiarly constituted than it has 
been in later years. A strong circle of wealthy families 
maintained rigorously the distinctions of class ; their en- 
tertainments were splendid, their manners magnificent, 
and the fame of the beautiful women born amongst them 
has been confirmed by a long succession reaching into 
the present day. They prescribed certain fashions, cus- 
toms, punctilios, to disregard which was social exile for f 
the offending party ; and they were divided even among 
themselves, I am told, by the most inveterate jealousies. 
It is said that certain people would almost have endured 
the thumb-screw rather than meet and speak to others. 
There seems to be good authority for believing that Haw- 
thorne could have entered this circle, had he so chosen. 
He had relatives who took an active part within it ; and 
it appears that there was a disposition among some of the 
fashionable coterie to show him particular favor, and 
that advances were made by them with the wish to draw 
him out. But one can conceive that it would not be ac- 



,* 



138 ISOLATION IN SALEM. 

ceptable to liim to meet them on any but terms of entire 
equality. The want of ample supplies of money, which 
was one of the results of the fallen fortunes of his family, 
made this impossible ; those who held sway were of older 
date in the place than some of the Hawthornes, and, hke 
many another long-established stock, they had a conviction 
that, whatever their outward circumstances might be, a 
certain intrinsic superiority remained theirs. They were, 
like the lady of Hawthorne blood mentioned in the "Amer- 
ican Note-Books," " proud of being proud." The Haw- 
thornes, it was said, were as unlike other people as tlie 
Jews were to Gentiles ; and the deep-rooted reserve which 
enveloped Hawthorne himself was a distinct family trait. 
So that, feeling himself to be in an unfair position, he 
doubtless found in these facts enough to cause him acute 
irritation of that sort which only very young or very 
proud and shrinking men can know. Besides this, the al- 
tered circumstances of his line, and his years in Maine, had 
brought him acquainted with humbler phases of life, and 
had doubtless developed in him a sympathy with simpler 
and less lofty people than these magnates. His father 
had been a Democrat, and loyalty to his memory, as well 
as tlie very pride just spoken of, conspired to lead him to 
that unpopular side. This set up another barrier between 
himself and the rich and powerful Whigs, for political feel- 
ing was almost inconceivably more bitter then than now. 
Tlius there arose within him an unquiet, ill-defined, com- 
fortless antipathy that must liave tortured him with weari- 
some distress ; and certainly shut him out from the sym- 
pathy and appreciation which, if all the conditions had 
been different, might have been given him by sincere and 
competent admirers. So little known among his own 
townsfolk, it is not to be wondered at that no encourag- 
ing answer reached him from more distant communities. 



WANT OF SYMPx\TIIY. 139 

lu his own home there was the faith whicli only love 
can give, but outside of it a chill drove his hopes and 
ardors back upon himself and turned them into despairs. 
His relatives, having seen him educated by the aid of 
his uncle, and now arrived at maturity, expected him to 
take his share in practical affairs. But the very means 
adopted to train him for a career had settled his choice 
of one in a direction perhaps not wholly expected ; all 
cares and gains of ordinary traffic seemed sordid and 
alien to him. Yet a young man just beghming his career, 
with no solid proof of his own ability acquired, cannot 
but be sensitive to criticism from those who have gained 
a right to comment by their own special successes. As 
he watched these slow and dreary years pass by, from his 
graduation in 1825 to the time when he first came fully 
before the public in 1837, he must often have been 
dragged down by terrible fears that perhaps the fairest 
period of life was being wasted, losing forever the chance 
of fruition. "I sat down by the wayside of life," he 
wrote, long after, " like a man under enchantment, and 
a shrubbery sprang up around me, and the bushes grew 
to be saplings, and the saplings became trees, until no 
exit appeared possible, through the entangling depths 
of my obscurity." Judge in what a silence and solitary 
self-communing the time must have passed, to leave a 
thought like this : " To think, as the sun goes down, what 
events have happened in the course of the day, — events 
of ordinary occurrence ; as, the clocks have struck, the 
dead have been buried." Or this : "A recluse like my- 
self, or a prisoner, to. measure time by the progress of 
sunshine through his chamber." His Note-Books show 
how the sense of unreality vexed and pursued him ; 
and how the sadness and solemnity of life returned 
upon him again and again ; and how he clothed these 



140 THE JOURNAL OF A IIEAllT. 

dark visitants of liis brain with llie colors of imagination, 
and turned them away from liim in the guise of miracu- 
lous fantasies. He talks with himself of writing " the 
journal of a human heart for a single day, in ordinary 
circumstances. The lights and shadows that flit across 
it, its internal vicissitudes." But this is almost precisely 
what his printed Note-Books have revealed to us. Only 
now and then do we get precisely the thought that is 
passing through his mind at the moment ; it more often 
tlirows upon the page a reflected image, — some strange 
and subtle hint for a story, the germs of delicate fabrics 
long afterward matured, some merry or sad conceit, some 
tender yet piercing inference, — like the shadows of clouds 
passing quickly across a clear sky, and casting momen- 
tary glooms, and glances of light, on the ground below. 
These journals do not begin until a date seven years af- 
ter " Tanshawe " was published ; but it is safe to assume 
that they mirror pretty closely the general complexion of 
the intervening years. 

His mode of life during this period was fitted to nur- 
ture his imagination, but must have put the endurance 
of his nerves to the severest test. The statement that 
for several years " he never saw the sun," is entirely 
an error ; but it is true that he seldom chose to walk 
in the town except at night, and it is said that he was 
extremely fond of going to fires if they occurred after 
dark. In summer he was up shortly after sunrise, and 
would go down to bathe in the sea. The morning was 
chiefly given to study, the afternoon to writing, and in 
the evening he would take long walks, exploring the 
coast from Gloucester to Marblehead and Lynn, — a range 
of many miles. Or perhaps he would pace the streets 
of the town, unseen but observing, gatliering material 
for something in the vein of his delicious " Night 



DAILY HABITUDES. 141 

Sketclies." "After a time," lie writes, "the visions 
vanish, and will not appear again at my bidding. Then, 
it being nightfall, a gloomy sense of unreality depresses 
my spirits, and impels me to venture out before the 
clock shall strike bedtime, to satisfy myself that the 
world is not made of such shadowy materials as have 
busied me throughout the day. A dreamer may dwell 
so long among fantasies, that the things without him will 
seem as unreal as those within." Or, if he chose a later 
hour, he might go abroad to people the deserted tlior- 
oughfares with wilder phantoms. Sometimes he took the 
day for his rambles, Avandering perhaps over Endicott's 
ancient Orchard Farm and among the antique houses and 
grassy cellars of old Salem village, the witchcraft ground ; 
or losing himself among the pines of Montserrat and in 
the silence of the Great Pastures, or strolling along the 
beaches to talk with old sailors and fishermen. His 
tramps along the Manchester and Beverly shores or from 
Marblehead to Nahaut were productive of such delicate 
tracings as " Eootprints by the Sea-shore," or the dream- 
autobiography of " The Village Uncle." " Grudge me 
not the day," he says, in the former sketch, " that has 
been spent in seclusion, which yet was not solitude, since 
the great sea has been my companion, and the little sea- 
birds my friends, and the wind has told me his secrets, 
and airy shapes have flitted around my hermitage. Such 
companionship works an effect upon a man's character, 
as if he had been admitted to the society of creatures that 
are not mortal," This touches the inmost secret of those 
lonely, youthful years, which moulded the pure-hearted 
muser with ethereal, unsuspected fingers. Elsewhere, 
Hawthorne has given another glimpse into his interior 
life at this time : " This scene came into my fancy as 
I walked along a hilly road, on a starlight October 



142 VISION AND REALITY. 

evening ; in the pure and bracing air I became all soul, 
and felt as if I could climb the sky, and run a race 
along the Milky Way. Here is another tale in which 
I wrapped myself during a dark and dreary night-ride 
in the month of March, till the rattling of the wheels and 
the voices of my companions seemed like faint sounds 
of a dream, and my visions a bright reality. That scrib- ' 
bled page describes shadows which I summoned to my 
bedside at midnight ; they would not depart when I bade 
them ; the gray dawn came, and found me wide awake 
and feverish, the victim of my own enchantments ! " 
Susan, the imaginary wife in "The Village Uncle," is 
said to have had a prototype in the daughter of a Salem 
fisherman, whose wit and charm gave Hawthorne fre- 
quent amusement ; and I suppose that not seldom he 
reaped delightful suggestions from liis meetings with 
frank, unconscious, and individual people of tastes and ' 
life unlike his own. I have heard it told with a polite, 
self-satisfied scorn, that he was in the habit of visiting 
now and then a tavern patronized by 'longshore-men 
and nautical veterans, to listen to their talk. I can 
well believe it, for it is this sort of intercourse that a 
person of manly genius, with a republican fellow-feeling 
for the unrenowned, most covets. How well he gives 
the tone of these old sea-dogs, when he writes : " The 
blast will put in its word among their hoarse voices, and 
be understood by all of them ! " It was this constant 
searching among the common types of men, and his ready 
sympathy with them, refined as it was hearty, that stored 
his mind with a variety of accurate impressions which 
afterward surprised observers, in a man of habits so 
retired. 

His uncles, the Mannings, were connected with exten- 
sive stage-coach lines at this time, and Hawthorne seems 



TRAVELS IN CONNECTICUT. 143 

to liave used tliese as antennse to bring himself in contact 
with new and nutritive regions and people. A letter, 
probably written in 1830, which 1 do not feel at liberty 
to quote entire, tells something of a trip that he took 
with Samuel Manning through a part of Connecticut 
and the Connecticut valley. The extracts that follow 
give a glimpse of the fresh and alert interest he felt 
about everything ; and I regard them as very important 
in showing the obverse of that impression of unhealthy 
solitude wliich has been so generally received from ac- 
counts of Hawthorne hitherto published. 

" We did not leave New Haven till last Saturday .... and we 
were forced to halt for the night at Cheshire, a village about fif- 
teen miles from New Haven. The next day being Sunday, we 
made a Sabbath day's journey of seventeen miles, and put up 
at Farmington. As we were wearied with rapid travelling, we 
found it impossible to attend divine service, which was (of 
course) very grievous to us both. In the evening, however, 
I went to a Bible class with a very polite and agreeable gentle- 
man, whom 1 afterward discovered to be a strolling tailor of 

very questionable habits We are now at Deerfeld 

(though I believe my letter is dated Greenfield). . . . with 
our faces northward ; nor shall I marvel much if your Uncle 
Sam pushes on to Canada, unless we should meet with two or 
three bad taverns in succession 

" I meet with many marvellous adventures. At New Haven 
T observed a gentleman staring at me with great earnestness, 
after which he went into the bar-i'oom, I suppose to inquire 
"who I might be. Finally, he came up to me and said that as 
I bore a striking resemblance to a family of Stanburys, he 
was induced to inquire if I was connected with them. I was 
sorry to be obliged to answer in the negative. At another 
place they took me for a lawyer in search of a place to settle, 
and strongly recommended their own village. Moreover, I 
heard some of the students at Yale College conjecturing that 



144 "the seven vagabonds." 

I was an Englishman, and to-day, as I was standing without my 
coat at the door of a tavern, a man came up to me, and asked 
me for some oats for his horse." 

It was during this trip, I Lave small doubt, that he 
found the scenery, and perhaps the persons, for that 
pretty interlude, " The Seven Vagabonds." The story is 
placed not far from Stamford, and the conjurer in it 
says, " I am taking a trip northward^ this warm weather, 
across the Connecticut first, and then up througli Yermont, 
and may be into Canada before the fall." The narrator 
himself queries by what right he came among these wan- 
derers, and furnishes himself an answer which suggests 
that side of his nature most apt to appear in these 
journeys : " The free mind that preferred its own folly 
to another's wisdom ; the open spirit that found compan- 
ions everywhere ; above all, the restless impulse that had 
so often made me wretched in the midst of enjoyments : 
these were my claims to be of their society." " If there 
be a faculty," he also writes, " which I possess more 
perfectly than most men, it is that of" throwing myself 
mentally into situations foreign to my own, and detecting 
with a cheerful eye the desirableness of each." There is 
also one letter of 1831, sent back during an expedi- 
tion in New Hampshire, which supplies the genesis of 
another Twice-Told Tale, " The Canterbury Pilgrims." 

" 1 walked to the Shaker village yesterday [he says], and was 
shown over the estahlishment, and dined there with a squire and 
a doctor, also of the world's people. On my arrival, the first thing 
I saw was a- jolly old Shaker carrying an immense decanter of 
their superb cider ; and as soon as I told him my husincss, he 
turned out a tumblerful and gave me. It was as much as a 
common head could clearly carry. Our dining-room was well 
furnished, the dinner exceUent, and the table attended hy a 



AT CANTERBURY. 145 

micltlle-aged Shaker lady, good looking and cheerful This 

establishment is immensely rich. Their land extends two or 
three miles along the road, and there are streets of great honses 

painted yellow and tipt with red On the Avhole, they lead 

a good and comfortable life, and, if it were not for their ridicu- 
lous ceremonies, a man could not do a wiser thing than to join 
them. Those whom I conversed with Avere intelligent, and ap- 
peared happy. 1 spoke to them about becoming a member of 
their society, but have come to no decision on that point. 

" AVe have had a pleasant journey enough I make 

innumerable acquaintances, and sit down on the doorsteps with 
judges, generals, and all the potentates of the land, discours- 
ing about the Salem murder [that of Mr. White], the cow- 
skinning of Isaac Hill, the price of hay, and the value of 
horse-flesh. The country is very uneven, and your Uncle Sara 
groans bittei'ly whenever we come to the foot of a low hill ; 
though this ought to make me groan rather than him, as I 
have to get out and trudge every one of them." 

Tlie " Chippings with a Chisel " point to some fur- 
ther wanderings, to Martha's Vineyard; and an uncol- 
lected sketch reveals the fact that he had been to Niagara. 
It was probably then that he visited Ticonderoga ; * but 
not till some years later that he saw New York. With 
these exceptions, and a trip to Washington before going 
to Liverpool in 1853, every day of his life up to that 
date was passed within New England. In " The Toll- 
Gatherer's Day " one sees the young observer at work 
upon the details of an ordinary scene near home. The 
" small square edifice which stands between shore and 
shore in the midst of a long bridge," spanning an arm 
of the sea, refers undoubtedly to the bridge from Salem 
to Beverly. But how lightly his spirit hovers over the 

* A brief sketch of the fortress is included in The Snow 
Image volume of the Works. 



146 SCENES NEAR HOME. 

stream of actual life, scarcely toucliing it before spring- 
ing up again, like a sea-bird on tlie crest of a wave ! 
Nothing could be more accurate and polished than liis 
descriptions and his presentation of the actual facts ; but 
his fancy rises resilient from these to some dreamy, far- 
seeing perception or gentle moral inference. The visible 
human pageant is only of value to him as it suggests the 
viewless host of heavenly shapes that hang above it like 
an idealizing mirage. His- attitude at this time recalls 
a suggestion of his own in " Sights from a Steeple " : 
" The most desirable mode of existence might be that of 
a spiritualized Paul Pry, hovering invisible round man 
and woman, witnessing their deeds, searching into their 
hearts, borrowing brightness from their felicity, and shade 
from their sorrow, and retaining no emotion peculiar to 
himself." He had the longing which every creative 
mind must feel, to mix with other beings and share to 
the utmost the possibihties of human weal or woe, sup- 
pressing his own experience so far as to make himself a 
transparent medium for the emotions of mankind ; but 
he still lacked a definite connection with the multi- 
farious drama of human fellowship ; he could not catch 
his cue and play his answering part, and therefore gave 
voice to a constantly murmurous, moralizing " aside." He 
delights to let the current of action flow around him and 
beside him ; he warms his heart in it ; but when he again 
withdraws by himself, it is with him as with the old toll- 
gatherer at close of day, "mingling reveries of Heaven 
with remembrances of earth, the whole procession of 
mortal travellers, all the dusty pilgrimage which he has 
witnessed, seems like a flitting show of phantoms for his 
thoughtful soul to muse upon." 

"What would a man do," he asks himself, in-liis jour- 
nal, " if he were compelled to live always in the sultry 



TONIC SOLITUDE. 147 

heat of society, and could never bathe himself in cool 
solitude?" As vet, this bracing influence of quietude, 
so essential to his well-being, fascinates him, and he can- 
not shake off its influence so far as to enter actively and 
for personal interests into any of the common pursuits 
even of the man w^ho makes a business of literature. 
Yet nothing impresses him more than the fact that 
every one carries a solitude with him, wherever he goes, 
like a shadow. Twice, with an interval of three years be- 
tween, this idea recurs in the form of a hint for romance. 
" Two lovers or other persons, on the most private busi- 
ness, to appoint a meeting in what they supposed to be 
a place of the utmost solitude, and to find it thronged 
with people." The idea implied is, that this would in 
fact be the completest privacy they could have wished. 
*' The situation of a man in the midst of a crowd, yet 
as completely in the power of another, life and all, as 
if they two were in the deepest solitude." This contra- ' 
diction between the apparent openness that must rule 
one's conduct among men, and the real secrecy that may 
coexist with it, even when one is most exposed to the 
gaze of others, excites in his mind a whole train of 
thought based on the falsity of appearances. If a man 
can be outwardly open and inwardly reserved in a good 
sense, he can be so in a bad sense ; so, too, he may have 
the external air of great excellence and purity, while in- 
ternally he is foul and unfaithful. This discovery strikes 
our perfectly sincere and true-hearted recluse with in- 
tense and endless horror. He tests it, by turning it 
innumerable ways, and imagining all sorts of situations in 
which such contradictions of appearance and reality miglit 
be illustrated. At one time, he conceives of a friend who 
should be true by day, and false at night. At another he 
suggests : " Our body to be possessed by two different 



148 THE KEY OF CONTRADICTION. 

spirits, so that half the visage shall express one mood, and 
the other half another," " A man living a wicked life 
in one place and simultaneously a virtuous and religious 
one in another." Then he perceives that this same uncer- 
tainty and contradiction affects the lightest and seemingly 
most harmless things in the world. " The world is so 
sad and solemn," he muses, " that things meant in jest 
are liable, by an overpowering influence, to become dread- 
ful earnest." And then he applies this, as in the follow- 
ing : " A virtuous but giddy girl to attempt to play a 
trick on a man. He sees what she is about, and con- 
trives matters so that she throws herself completely into 
his power, and is ruined, — all in jest." Likewise, the 
most desirable things, by this same law of contradiction, 
often prove the least satisfactory. Thus: "A person 
or family long desires some particular good. At last it 
comes in such profusion as to be the great pest of their 
lives." And this is equally true, he finds, whether the 
desired thing be sought in order to gratify a pure instinct 
or a wrong and revengeful one. "As an instance, merely, 
suppose a woman sues her lover for breach of promise, 
and gets the money by instalments, through a long series 
of years. At last, when the miserable victim were utterly 
trodden down, the triumpher would have become a very 
devil of evil passions, — they having overgrown his whole 
nature ; so tliat a far greater evil would have come upon 
himself than on his victim." This theme of self-punished 
revenge, as we know, was afterward thoroughly wrought 
out in " Tlie Scarlet Letter." Another form in which the 
thought of this pervading falsehood in earthly affairs comes 
to him is the frightful fancy of people being poisoned by 
communion-wine. Thus does the insincerity and corrup- 
tion of man, the lie that is hidden in nearly every life and 
almost every act, rise and thrust itself before him, which- 



THE Mx\ZE AND THE SERPENT. 149 

ever way lie turns, like a serpent in liis path. He is in 
the position of the father confessor of whom he at one 
time thinks, and of " his reflections on character, and the 
contrast of the inward man with the outward, as he looks 
around his congregation, all whose secret sins are known 
to him." But Hawthorne does not let this hissing ser- 
pent either rout him or poison him. He is determined 
to visit the ways of life, to find the exit of the maze, and 
so tries every opening, unalarmed. The serpent is in all : 
it proves to be a deathless, large-coiled hydra, encircling 
the young explorer's virgin soul, as it does that of every 
pure aspirer, and trying to drive him back on himself, 
with a sting in his heart that shall curse him with a life- 
long venom. It does, indeed, force him to recoil, but 
not with any mortal wound. He retires in profound sor- 
row, acknowledging that earth holds nothing perfect, that 
his dream of ideal beings leading an ideal life, which, in 
spite of the knowledge of evil, he has been cherishing 
for so many years, is a dream to be fulfilled in the here- 
after alone. He confesses to himself that " there is evil 
in every human heart, which may remain latent, perhaps, 
through the whole of life ; but circumstances may rouse 
it to activity." It is not a new discovery ; but from the 
force with which it strikes him, we may guess the strength 
of his aspiration, the fine temper of his faith in the good 
and the beautiful. To be driven to this dismal conclu- 
sion is for him a source of inexpressible dismay, because 
he had trusted so deeply in the possibility of reaching 
some brighter truth. No ; not a new discovery ; — but 
one who approaches it with so much sensibility y^e/.? it to 
be new, with all the fervor which the most absolute nov- 
elty could rouse. This is the deepest and the true origi- 
nality, to possess such intensity of feeling that the oldest 
truth, wlien approached by our own methods, shall be full 
of a primitive impressiveiiess. 



150 A WOELD-OLD WOE. 

But, in tlie midst of tlie depression born of liis immense 
sorrow over sin, Hawthorne found compensations. Pirst, 
in the query which lie puts so briefly: "The good deeds 
in an evil life, — the generous, noble, and excellent actions 
done by people habitually wicked, — to ask what is to be- 
come of them." This is the motive which has furnished 
novehsts for the last half-century with their most stirring 
and pathetic effects. It is a sort of escape, a safety-valve 
for the hot fire of controversy on the soul's fate, and of- 
fers in its pertinent indefiniteness a vast solace to those 
w^ho are trying to balance the bewildering account of vir- 
tue with sin. Hawthorne found that here was a partial 
solution of the problem, and he enlarged upon it, toward 
the end of his life, in " The Marble Faun." But it was 
a second and deeper thought that furnished him ihe 
chief compensation. In one of the " Twice-Told Tales," 
" Fancy's Show-Box," he deals with the question, how 
far the mere thought of sin, the incipient desire to com- 
mit it, may injure the soul. After first strongly pic- 
turing the reality of certain sinful impulses in a man's 
mind, which had never been carried out, — "A scheme of 
guilt," he argues, taking up the other side, " till it be put 
in execution, greatly resembles a train of incidents in a 
projected tale Thus a novel-writer, or a drama- 
tist, in creating the villain of romance, and fitting him 
with evil deeds, and the villain of actual life in projecting 
crimes that will be perpetrated, may almost meet each 
other half-way between reality and fancy. It is not until 
the crime is accomplished that guilt clinches its gripe 
upon the heart, and claims it for its own. Then, and not 
before, sin is actually felt and acknowledged, and, if un- 
accompanied by repentance, grows a thousand-fold more 
virulent by its self-consciousness. Be it considered, also, 
that men often overestimate their capacity for evil. At a 



BROTHERHOOD WITH THE GUILTY. 151 

distance, while its attendant circumstances do not press 
upon their notice, its results are dimly seen, they can 

bear to contemplate it In truth, there is no such 

thing in man's nature as a settled and full resolve, either 
for good or evil, except at the very moment of execution. 
Let us hope, therefore, that all the dreadful consequences 
of sin will not be incurred, unless the act have set its seal 
upon the thought. Yet .... man must not disclaim 
his brotherhood, even with the guiltiest, since, though his 
hand be clean, his heart has surely been polluted by the 
flitting phantoms of iniquity." That is,' purity is too 
spotless a tiling to exist in absolute perfection in a human 
being, who must often feel at least the dark flush of pas- 
sionate thoughts falling upon him, however blameless of 
life he may be. From this lofty conception of purity 
comes that equally noble humility of always feeling " his 
brotherhood, even with the guiltiest." What more logi- 
cal issue from the Christian idea, what more exquisitely 
tender reuddring of it than this ? "Let the whole world 
be cleansed, or not a man or woman of us can be clean ! " 
was his exclamation, many years later, in that English 
workhouse which he describes in a heart-rending chapter 
of " Our Old Home " called " Outside Glimpses of Eng- 
lish Poverty." And it was then that he revealed the 
vast depth and the reality of his human sympathy toward 
the wretched and loatlisome little foundling child that 
silently sued to him for kindness, till he took it up and 
caressed it as tenderly as if he had been its father. 

Armed with these two perceptions, of the good that^ 
still persists in evil persons, and the deep charity which 
every one must feel towards even tlie most abject fellow- 
being, Hawthorne moves forth again to trace the maze ; 
and lo, the serpent drops down, cowering. He has found 
a charm that robs sin and crime of their deadly hurt, and 



15B ' ITS SxiVING TENDERNESS. 

cau handle tliem without danger. It is said by some that 
Hawthorne treats wrong and corruption too shrinkingly, 
and his mood of never-lessened and acute sensibility 
touching them is contrasted with that of " virile " writers 
like Balzac and George Sand. But these incline to 
make a menagerie of life, thrusting their heads into the 
very lion's mouth, or boldly embracing the snake of sin. 
They are indeed superior in strong dramatic and realistic 
effects; but, unvicious as may be iheir aim, they are not 
filled with a robust morality : they deliberately choose 
unclean elements to heighten the interest, — albeit using 
such elements with magnificent strength and skill. Let 
us be grateful that Hawthorne does not so covet the 
applause of the clever club-man or of the unconscious 
vulgarian, as to junket about in caravan, carrying the 
passions with him in gaudy cages, and feeding them with 
raw flesh ; grateful that he never loses the archangelic 
light of pure, divine, dispassionate wrath, in piercing the 
dragon ! 

We see now how, in this early term of probation, he 
was finding a philosophy and an unsectarian rehgious- 
ness, which ever stirred below the clear surface of his 
language like the bubbling spring at bottom of a forest 
pool. It has been thought that Hawthorne developed 
late. But the most striking thing about the " Twice- 
Told Tales " and the first entries in the " American Note- 
Books " is their evidence of a calm and mellow maturity. 
These stories are like the simple but well-devised theme 
which a musician prepares as the basis of a whole com- 
position : they show the several tendencies which un- 
derlie all the subsequent works. First, there are the 
\ scenes from New England history, — " Endicott and the 
Red Cross," " Tiie Maypole of Merry Mount," "The 
Gray Champion," the " Tales of the Province House." 



RANGE OF THE TALES. 153 

Then we have the psychological vem, in " The Prophetic 
Pictures," " The Minister's Black Veil," " Dr. Heideg. 
ger," " Fancy's Show-Box " ; and along with this the 
current of delicate essay- writing, as in "The Haunted 
Mind," and " Sunday at Home." "Little Annie's Ram- 
ble," again, foreshadows his charming children's tales. 
It is rather remarkable that he should thus have sounded, 
though faintly, the whole diapason in his first works. 
Moreover, he had already at this time attained a style at 
once flowing and large in its outline, and masterly in 
its minuteness. 

But this maturity was not won without deep suffering 
and long-deferred hope. 

If actual contact with men resulted in such grave 
and sorrowful reflection as we have traced, how drearily 
trying must have been the climaxes of solitary thought 
after a long session of seclusion ! And much the larger 
portion of his time was consumed amid an absolute 
silence, a privacy unbroken by intimate confidences and 
rife with exhausting and depressing reactions from in- 
tense imagination and other severe intellectual exer- 
cise. Not only must the repression of this period have 
amounted at times to positive anguish, but there was 
also the perplexing perception that his life's fairest pos- 
sibilities were still barren. " Every individual has a place 
in the world, and is important to it in some respects, 
whether he chooses to be so or not." So runs one of 
the extracts from the " American Note-Books " ; and now 
and then we get from the same source a glimpse of the 
haunting sense that he is missing his fit relation to the 
rest of the race, the question whether his pursuit was 
not in some way futile like all the human pursuits he had 
noticed, — whether it was not to be nipped by the same 
perversity and contradiction that seemed to affect all 
7* 



154 THE AUTHOR'S MOOD. 

things mundane. Here is one of his proposed plots, 
which turns an inner light upon his own frame of mind : 
" Various good and desirable things to be presented to 
a young man, and offered to his acceptance, — as a 
friend, a wife, a fortune ; but he to refuse them all, 
suspecting that it is merely a delusion. Yet all to be 
real, and he to be told so when too late." Is this not, 
in brief, what he conceives may yet be the story of his 
own career ? Another occurs, in the same relation : 
" A man tries to be happy in love ; he cannot sincerely 
give his heart, and the affair seems all a dream. In 
domestic life the same ; in politics, a seeming patriot : 
but still he is sincere, and all seems like a theatre." 
These items are the merest indicia of a whole history 
of complex emotions, which made this epoch one of con- 
tinuous though silent and unseen struggle. In a Pref- 
ace prefixed to the tales, in 1851, the author wrote: 
" They are the memorials of very tranquil and not un- 
happy years." Tranquil they of course were ; and to 
the happy and successful man of forty-seven, the vex- 
ing moods and dragging loneliness of that earlier period 
would seem " not unhappy," because he could then see 
all the good it had contained. I cannot agree with 
Edwin Whipple, who says of them, " There was audible 
to the delicate ear a faint and muffled growl of personal 
discontent, M'hich showed they were not mere exercises 
of penetrating imaginative analysis, but had in them the 
morbid vitality of a despondent mood." For this applies 
to only one of the number, " The Ambitious Guest." 
Nor do I find in them the "misanthropy" which he 
defines at some length. On the contrary, they are, as 
the author says, " his attempts to open an intercourse 
with the world," incited by an eager sympathy, but also 
restrained by a stern perception of right and wrong. 



HOW TO DISCRIMINATE IT. 155 

Yet I am inclined to adhere to the grave view of his 
inner lite just sketched. When his friend Miss Peabody 
first penetrated his retirement, liis pent-up sympathies 
flowed, forth in a way that showed how they had longed 
for relief. He returned constantly to the discussion 
of his peculiar mode of living, as if there could be no 
understanding between himself and another, until this 
had been cleared up and set aside. Among other things, 
he spoke of a dream by which he was beset, that lie was 
walking abroad, and that all the houses were mirrors 
which reflected him a thousand times and overwhelmed 
him with mortification. This gives a peculiar insight 
into his sensitive condition. 

The noiseless, uneventful weeks slipped by, each day 
disguising itself in exact semblance of its fellow, like a 
file of mischievous maskers. Hawthorne sat in his lit- 
tle room under the eaves reading, studying, voicelessly 
communing with himself through his own journal, or — 
mastered by some wild suggestion or mysterious specu- 
lation — feeling his way through the twilight of dreams, 
into the dusky chambers of that house of thought whose 
haunted interior none but himself ever visited. He had 
little communication with even the members of his family, 
Frequently his meals were brought and left at his locked 
door, and it was not often that the four inmates of the 
old Herbert Street mansion met in family circle. He 
never read his stories aloud to his mother and sisters, 
as might be imagined from, the picture which Mr. 
Fields draws of the young author reciting his new pro- 
ductions to his listening family; though, when they met, 
he sometimes read older literature to them. It was the 
custom in this household for the several members to 
remain very much by themselves ; tlie three ladies were 
perhaps nearly as rigorous recluses as himself; and. 



156 THE HOUSE OF THOUGHT. 

speaking of the isolation which reigned among them, 
Hawthorne once said, " We do not even lire at our 
liouse ! " But still the presence of this near and gentle 
feminine element is not to be underrated as ibrmius: a 
very great compensation in the cold and difficult morning 
of Hawthorne's life. 

If the w^eek-day could not lure him from his sad re- 
treat, neither conld the Sunday. He had the right to 
a j)ew in the First Church, which his family had held 
since 1640, but he seldom went to service there after 
comhig from college. His religion was supplied from 
sources not always opened to the common scrutiny, and 
it never chanced that he found it essential to join any 
church. 

The chief resource against disappointment, the offset 
to the pain of so much lonely living and dark-veined 
meditation w^as, of course, the writing of tales. Never 
was a man's mind more truly a kingdom to him. This 
Avas the fascination that carried him through the weary 
w^ailing-time. Yet even that pleasure had a reverse side, 
to which the fictitious Oberon has no doubt given voice 
in these words : " You cannot conceive what an effect the 
composition of these tales has had upon me." 1 have 
become ambitious of a bubble, and careless of solid repu- 
tation. I am surrounding myself Avith shadows, which 
bewilder me by aping the realities of life. They have 
drawn me aside from the beaten path of the world, and 
led me into a strange sort of solitude .... where no- 
body wished for what I do, nor thhiks or feels as I do." 
Alluding to this season of early obscurity to a friend 
who had done much to break it up, he once said, " 1 was 
like a person talking to himself in a dark room." To 
make his own reflection in a mirror the subject of a 
story was one of his projects then formed, which he car- 



CHARGES OF MORBIDXESS. 157 

ried out in the " Mosses." Witli that image of the dark 
room, and this suggested refleeliou in the mirror, we can 
rehabilitate the scene of wliich the broken hglits and 
trembling shadows are strewn through the " Twice-Told 
Tales." Sober and weighty the penumbrous atmosphere 
in which the young creator sits ; but how cahn, thought- 
ful, and beautiful the dim vision of his face, lit by the 
sheltered radiance of ethereal fancies ! Behind his own 
form we catch the movement of mysterious shapes, — men 
and women wearing aspects of joy or anger, calm or 
passionate, gentle and pitiable, or stern, splendid, and for- 
bidding. It is not quite a natural twilight in which we 
behold these things ; rather the awesome shadowiness of 
a partial eclipse ; but gleams of the healthiest sunshine 
withal mingle in the prevailing tint, bringing reassur- 
ance, and receiving again a rarer value from the con- 
trast. There are but few among the stories of this series 
afterward brought together by the author which are open 
to the charge of morbidness. In "The White Old 
Maid " an indefinable horror, giving the tale a certain 
shapelessness, crowds out the compensating brightness 
which in most cases is not wanting ; perhaps, too, " The 
Ambitious Guest " leaves one with too hopeless a down- 
fall at the end ; and " The Wedding Knell " cannot es- 
cape a suspicion of disagreeable gloom. But these 
extremes are not frequent. The wonder is that Haw- 
thorne's mind could so often and so airily soar above the 
shadows that at this time hung about him ; that he 
should nearly always suggest a philosophy so complete, 
so gently wholesome, and so penetrating as that which he 
mixes with even the bitterest distillations of his dreams. 
Nor is the sadness of his tone disordered or destruc- 
tive, more than it is selfish ; he does not inculcate de- 
spair, nor protest against lite and fate, nor indulge in 



158 VALUE OF THIS SECLUSION. 

gloomy or weak self-pity. The only direct, exposition of 
his own case is contained in a sketch, "The Journal 
of a Solitary Man," not reprinted during his life. One 
extract from this I will make, because it sums up, though 
more plaintively than was his wont, Hawthorne's view of 
his own life at this epoch : — 

" It is hard to die without one's happiness ; to none more 
so than myself, whose early resolution it had been to partake 
hn-gcly of the joys of life, but never to be burdened with its 
cares. Vain philosophy ! The very hardships of the poorest 
laborer, whose whole existence seems one long toil, has some- 
thing preferable to my best pleasures. Merely skimming the 
surface of life, I know nothlLg by my own experience of its 
deep and warm realities, .... so that few mortids, even the 
humblest and weakest, have been such ineffectual shadows in 
the world, or die so utterly as I must. Even a young man's 
bliss has not been mine. AVith a thousand vagrant fantasies, 
I have never truly loved, and perhaps shall be doomed to lone- 
liness throughout the eternal future, because, here on earth, my 
sold has never married itself to the soul of woman." 

The touch about avoiding the cares of life is no doubt 
merely metaphorical ; but the self-imposed doom of eter- 
nal loneliness reveals the excess of sombreness in which 
he clothed his condition to his own perception. One 
may say that the adverse factors in his problem at this 
time were purely imaginary ; that a little resolution and 
determined activity would have shaken off the incubus : 
but this is to lose siglit of the gist of the matter. The 
situation in itself, — the indeterminateness and repression 
of it, and the denial of any satisfaction to his warm and 
various sympathies, and his c;ij)acity for atTcction and 
responsibihty, — must be allowed to have been intensely 
wearing. Hawthorne believed himself to possess a 
strongly social nature, which was cramped, chilled, and to 



ITS SADDER ASPECT. 159 

some extent permanently restrained by tliis long seelusion 
at the beginning of his career. This alone might furnish 
just cause for bitterness against the fate that chained 
him. It was not a matter of option ; for be knew that 
liis battle must be fought through as he had begun it, 
and until 1836 no slightest loophole of escape into action 
presented itself. It lay before him to act out the tragedy 
of isolation wliicli is the lot of every artist in America 
still, though greatly mitigated by the devotion of our first 
generation of national writers. If he had quitted his 
post sooner, and had tried by force to mould his genius 
according to theory, lie might have utterly distorted or 
stunted its growth. All that he could as yet do for him- 
self was to preserve a certain repose and harmony in the 
midst of uncertainty and delay ; and for this he formed 
four wise precepts : " To break off customs ; to sliake off 
spirits ill disposed ; to meditate on youth ; to do nothing 
against one's genius." * Thus he kept himself fresh and 
flexible, hopeful, ready for emergency. But that I have 
not exaggerated the severity and import of his long vigil, 
let this revery of his show, written at Liverpool, in 
1855 : " I think I have been happier this Christmas than 
ever before, — by my own fireside, and with my wife and 
children about me; more content to enjoy what I liave, 
less anxious for anything beyond it in this life. My early 
life was perhaps a good preparation for the declining half 
of life ; it having been such a blank that any thereafter 
would compare favorably with it. Tor a long, long 
while I have been occasionally visited with a singular 
dream ; and I have an impression that I have dreamed it 
ever since I have been in England. It is, that I am 
still at college, — or, sometimes, even at school, — and 
there is a sense that I have been there unconscionably 

* American Note-Books, Vol. I. 



160 THE INNER CONQUEST. 

long, and liave quite failed to make such progress as my 
contemporaries have done ; and I seem to meet some of 
them M'itli a feeling of sliame and depression that broods 
over me as I think of it, even when awake. This dream, 
recurring all through these twenty or thirty years, must 
be one of the effects of that lieavy seclusion in which I 
shut myself up for twelve years after leaving college, 
when everybody moved onward, and left me behind." 
Experiences which leave effects like this must bite their 
way into the heart and soul with a fearful energy ! This 
precursive solitude had tinged his very life-blood, and 
woven itself into the secret tissues of his brain. Yet, 
patiently absorbing it, he wrote late in life to a friend : 
"I am disposed to thank God for the gloom and chill 
of my early life, in the hope that my share of adver- 
sity came then, when I bore it alone." It was under 
such a guise that the test of his genius and character 
came to him. Every great mind meets once in life with 
a huge opposition that must somehow be made to suc- 
cumb, before its own energies can know their full 
strength, gain a settled footing, and make a roadway to 
move forward upon. Often these obstacles are viewless 
to others, and the combat is unsuspected ; the site of 
many a Penuel remains untraced; but none the less these 
are the pivots on which entire personal histories turn. 
Hawthorne's comparatively passive endurance M'as of 
inhnitely greater worth than any active irruption into the 
outer world would have been. It is obvious that we owe 
to the innumerable devious wanderings and obscure suf- 
ferings of his mind, under the influences just reviewed, 
something of his sure and subtle touch in feeling out the 
details of morbid moods ; for though his mind remained 
perfectly healthy, it had acquired acute sympathy with 
all hidden tragedies of lieart and braui. 



NECESSITY FOR AMERICAN GENIUS. 161 

But auotlier and larger purpose was not less well 
served bj this probation. The ability of American life 
to produce a genius in some sense exactly responding to 
its most distinctive qualities had yet to be demonstrated ; 
and this could' only be done by some one who would 
stake life and success on the issue, for it needed that 
a soul and brain of the highest endowment should be 
set apart solely for tlie experiment, even to the ruin 
of it if required, before the truth could be ascertained. 
Hawthorne, the slowly produced and complex result of a 
line of New-Englanders who carried American history in 
their very limbs, seemed providentially offered for the trial. 
It was well that temperament and circumstance drew him 
into a charmed circle of reserve from the first ; well, also, 
that he was further matured at a simple and rural col- 
lege pervaded by a homely American tone ; still more 
fortunate was it that nothing called him away to connect 
him with European culture, on graduating. To interpret 
this was the honorable office of his classmate Longfellow, 
who, with as much ease as dignity and charm, has filled 
the gap between the two half-worlds. The experiment 
to be tried was, simply, whether with books and men at 
his command, and isolated from the immediate influence 
of Europe, this American could evolve any new quality 
for the enrichment of literature. The conditions were 
strictly carried out ; even after he began to come in con- 
tact with men, in the intervals of his retirement, he 
saw only pure American types. A foreigner must have 
been a rare bird in Salem, in those days ; for the mari- 
time element which might have brought him was still 
American. Hawthorne, as we have seen, and as his 
Note-Books show, pushed through the farming regions 
and made acquaintance with the men of the soil ; and 
probably the first alien of whom he got at all a close view 

K 



162 HAWTHOHNE PURELY NATIVE. 

was the Monsieur S wliom lie found at Bridge's, on 

his visit to the latter, in 1837, described at length in 
the Note-Books. So much did Hawthorne study from 
these types, and so closely, that he might, had his genius 
directed, have written the most homely and realistic nov- 
els of New England life from the material which he picked 
up quite by the way. But though he did not translate 
his observations thus, the originality which he was con- 
tinuously ripening amid such influences was radically 
affected by them. They established a broad, irrepressi- 
ble republican sentiment in his mind ; they assisted liis 
natural, manly independence and simplicity to assert tliem- 
selves unaffectedly in letters ; and they had not a little to 
do, I suspect, with fostering his strong turn for examin- 
ing with perfect freedom and a certain refined shrewdness 
into everything tliat came before him, wdthout accept- 
ing prescribed opinions. The most characteristic way, 
perhaps, in which this American nurture acted was by 
contrast ;" for the universal matter-of-fact tone which he 
found among his fellow-citizens was an incessant spur to 
him to maintain a counteracting idealism. Thus, singu- 
larly enough, the most salient feature of the new Amer- 
ican product was its apparent denial of the national trait 
of practical sagacity. It is not to be supposed that 
Hawthorne adhered consciously to the aim of asserting 
the American nature in fiction. These things can be done 
only lialf consciously, at the most. Perhaps it is well 
that the mind on which so much depends should not be 
burdened with all the added anxiety of knowing how 
much is expected from it by the ages. Tlierefore, we 
owe the triumphant assertion of the American quality 
in this novel genius to Hawthorne's quiet, unfaltering, 
brave endurance of the weight that was laid upon him, 
unassisted by the certainty with which we now perceive 



ONE CAUSE OF HIS IDEALITY. 163 

that a great end was being served by it. But, although 
unaware of tliis end at the time, he afterward saw some 
of the significance of his youth. Writing in 1840, he 
speaks thus of his old room in Union Street : — 

" This claims to be called a haunted chamber, for thousands 
upon thousands of visions have appeared to me in it ; and some 
few of them have become visible to the world. If ever I 
should have a biogi-apher, he ought to make great mention 
of this chamber in my memoirs, because so much of my lonely 
youth was wasted here, and here my mind and character were 
formed ; ■slVl^ here I have been glad and hopeful, and here I 

have been despondent And now I begin to understand 

why I was imprisoned so many years in this lonely chamber, 
and why I could never break through the viewless bolts and 
bars ; for if I had sooner made my escape into the world, I 
should have grown hard and rough, and my heart might have 

become callous by rude encounters with the multitude 

But living in solitude till the fulness of time, I still kept the 
dew of my youth and the freshness of my heart." 

Yes, and more than this, Hawthorne ! It was a young 
nation's faith in its future which — unsuspected by any 
then, but always to be remembered henceforth — had 
found a worthy answer and after-type in this faithful 
and hopeful heart of yours ! Thus was it that the young 
poet who, in the sense we liave observed, stood for old 
New England, absorbed into himself also the atmosphere 
of the United States. The plant that rooted in tlie past 
had put forth a flower which drew color and perfume 
from to-day. In such wise did Hawthorne prove to be 
the unique American in fiction. 

I have examined the librarian's books at the Salem 
Athenseum, which indicate a part of the reading that 
the writer of the "Twice-Told Tales" went through. 



161 HAWTHORNE'S IlEADIKG. 

Tlie lists from the beginning of 1830 to 1838 include 
nearly four hundred volumes taken out by him, besides 
a quantity of bound magazines. This gives no account 
of his dealings with books in the previous five years, 
when he was not a shareholder in the Athenaeum, nor 
does it, of course, let us know anything of what he ob- 
tained from other sources. When Miss E. P. Peabody 
nuide his acquaintance, in 1836-37, he had, for example, 
read all of Balzac that had then apjieared ; and there is no 
record of this in the library lists. These lists alone, then, 
giving four hundred volumes in seven years, supply him 
with one volume a week, — not, on the whole, a meagre 
rate, when we consider the volumes of magazines, the 
possible sources outside of the library, and the number- 
less hours required for literary experiment. I do not 
fancy that he plodded through books ; but rather that he 
read with the easy energy of a vigorous, original mind, 
though he also knew the taste of severe study. " Bees," 
lie observes in one place, " are sometimes drowned (or 
suffocated) in the honey which they collect. So some 
writers are lost in their collected learning." He did not 
find it necessary to mount upon a pyramid of all learning 
previous to his epoch, in order to get the highest stand- 
point for his own survey of mankind. Neither was he 
" a man of parts," precisely ; being in himself a distinct 
whole. His choice of reading was ruled by a fiastidious 
need. He was fond of travels for a rainy day, and knew 
Mandeville; but at other times he took u]) books which 
seem to lie quite aside from his known pur])oses.* Vol- 
taire appears to have attracted him constantly ; he read 
him in tlie original, together with llousseau. At one 
time he examined Pascal, at another he read something 

* Sec Appendix III. 



CHOICE OF BOOKS. 165 

of Corneille and a part of Ra9ine. Of the English 
dramatists, he seems at this time to have tried only 
Massingor; "Inclibakl's Theatre" also, occurs. The local 
American histories took his attention pretty often, and he 
perused a variety of biography, — "Lives of the Philoso- 
phers," " Plutarch's Lives," biographies of Mohammed, 
Pitt, Jefferson, Goldsmith, Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats, 
Baxter, Hcber, Sir William Temple, and others. Brews- 
ter's " Natural Magic " and Sir Walter Scott's essay on 
"Demonology and Witchcraft " are books that one would 
naturally expect him to read ; and he had already begun 
to make acquaintance with the English State Trials, for 
which he always had a great liking. " Colquhoun on 
the Police " would seem not entirely foreign to one who 
mentally pursued so many malefactors ; but it is a little 
surprising that he should have found himself interested 
in "Babbage on the Economy of Machinery." He 
dipped, also, into botany and zoology ; turned over sev- 
eral volumes of Bayle's " Critical Dictionary," read Mrs. 
Jameson, and the " London Encyclopsedia of Architec- 
ture"; and was entertained by Dunlap's "History of 
the Arts of Design in America." It was from this last 
that he drew the plot of "The Prophetic Pictures," in 
the " Twice-Told Tales." Some Boston newspapers of 
the years 1739 to 1783 evidently furnished the material 
for an article called " Old News," reprinted in " The 
Snow Image." Hawthorne seems never to have talked 
much about reading : 't is imaginable that he was as shy in 
his choice of books and liis discussion of them, as in his 
intercourse with men ; and there is no more ground for 
believing that he did not like books, than that he cared 
nothing for men and women. Life is made up, for such 
a mind, of men, women, and books; Hawthorne accepted 
all three estates. 



166 A NEW HIPPOCRENE. 

Gradually, from the midst of the yoinig author's ob- 
scurity, there issued au attraction which made the world 
wish to know more of him. One by oue, the quiet essays 
and mournful-seeming stories came forth, like drops from 
a slow-distilling spring. The public knew nothing of the 
internal movement which had opened this slight fountain, 
nor suspected the dark concamerations through which the 
current made its way to the surface. The smallest moun- 
tain rill often has a thunder-storm at its back ; but the 
average reader of that day thought he had done quite 
enough, when he guessed that the new writer was a 
timid young man fabling under a feigned name, excellent 
in his limited way, who would be a great deal, better if 
he could come out of seclusion and make himself more 
like other people. 

The first contributions were made to the "Salem Ga- 
zette " and the " New England Magazine " ; then his at- 
tempts extended to the " Boston Token and Atlantic 
Souvenir," edited by S. G. Goodrich ; and later, to other 
periodicals. Mr. Goodrich wrote to his young contributor 
(October, 1831) : "I am gratified to find that all whose 
opinion I have heard agree with me as to the merit of the 
various pieces from your pen." But for none of these early 
performances did Hawthorne receive any considerable sum 
of money. And though his writings began at once to 
attract an audience, he had slight knowledge of it. Three 
young ladies — of whom his future sister-in-law. Miss 
Peabody, was one — were among the first admirers; and 
though Hawthorne baffled his readers and perhaps re- 
tarded his own notoriety by assuming different names in 
print,* they traced his contributions assiduously, cut them 

* Among these were " Oberon " and " Ashley Allen Royce," 
or " The Rev. A. A. Royce." The latter was used by him in 
the Democratic Review, so late as March, 1840. 



A TRIO OF ADMIRERS. 167 

out of magaziues, aud preserved tliem. But they could 
not discover his personal identity. One of them who hved 
in Salem used constantly to wonder, in driving about town, 
whether the author of her favorite tales could be living 
in this or in that house ; for it was known that he was 
a Salem resident. Miss Peabody, who liad in girlhood 
known something of the Hathorne family (the name was 
still written .either way, I am told), w^as misled by the 
new spelling, and by the prevalent idea that Nathaniel 
Hawthorne was an assumed name. This trio were 
especially moved by " The Gentle Boy " when it ap- 
peared, and Miss Peabody was on the point of address- 
ing " The Author of ' The Gentle Boy,' " at Salem, to 
tell him of the pleasure he had given. When afterward 
told of this, Hawthorne said, " I wish you had ! It 
would have been an era in my life." Soon after, the 
Peabodys returned to Salem, and she learned from 
some one that the new romancer was the son of the 
Widow Hathorne. Now it so chanced that her family 
had long ago occupied a house on Union Street, looking 
off into the garden of the old Manning family mansion ; 
and she remembered no son, though a vague image came 
back to her of a strong and* graceful boy's form dancing 
across the garden, at play, years before. Her mind 
therefore fastened upon one of the sisters, who, she knew, 
had shown great facility in writing : indeed, Hawthorne 
used at one time to say that it was she who should iiave 
been the follower of literature. Pull of this conception, 
she went to carry her burden of gratitude to the author, 
and after delays and difficulties, made her way into the 
retired and little-visited mansion. It was the other sis- 
ter into whose presence she came, and to her she began 
pouring out the reason of her intrusion, delivering at 
once her praises of the elder Miss Hathorne's fictions. 



168 INVASION OF SOLITUDE. 

"My brother's, you mean," was the response. 

" It is your brother, then." And Miss Peabody 
added : " If your brother can write lilie that, he has no 
riglit to be idle." 

"My brother never is idle," answered Miss Louisa, 
quietly. 

Thus began an acquaintance which helped to free Haw- 
thorne from the spell of solitude, and led directly to the 
richest experiences of his life. Old habits, however, 
were not immediately to be broken, and months passed 
without any response being made to the first call. Then 
at last came a copy of the "Twice-Told Tales," fresh 
from the press. But it was not until the establishment 
of the " Democratic Review," a year or two later, that 
occasion offered for a renewal of relations. Hawthorne 
was too shy to act upon the first invitation. Miss Pea- 
body, finally, addressing him by letter, to inquire concern- 
ing the new periodical, for w^ich he had been engaged 
as a contributor, asked him to &ome with both his sisters 
on the evening of the same day. Entirely to her surprise, 
they came. She herself opened the door, and there be- 
fore her, between his sisters, stood a splendidly handsome 
youth, tall and strong, with no appearance whatever of 
timidity, but, instead, an almost fierce determination 
making his face stern. This was his resource for car- 
rying otf the extreme inward tremor which he really 
felt. His hostess brought out Plaxman's designs for 
Dante, just received from Professor Pelton of Harvard,* 
and the party made an evening's entertainment out of 
them. 

The news of this triumph, imparted to a friend of Miss 

* The book may have been Felton's Homer with Flaxman's 
drawings, issued in 1833. 



HAWTHORNE'S QUICK RESPONSE. 169 

Peabody's, led to an immediate invitation of Hawthorne 
to dinner at anol.lier house, for the next day. He ac- 
cepted this, also, and on returning homeward, stopped at 
the " Salem Gazette " office, full of the excitement of his 
U8W experiences, announcing to Mr. Foote, the editor, 
that he was gel ting dissipated. He told of the evening 
with Miss Peabody, where he said he had had a delightful 
time, and of the dinner just achieved. " And I 've had 
a delightful time there, too ! " he added. Mr. Foote, per- 
ceiving an emergency, at once asked the young writer to 
come to his own house for an evening. Hawthorne, thor- 
oughly aroused, consented. When the evening came, 
several ladies who had been invited assembled before the 
author arrived ; and among them Miss Peabody. When he 
reached the place he stopped short at the drawing-room 
threshold, startled by the presence of strangers, and stood 
perfectly motionless, but with the look of a sylvan creat- 
ure on the point of fleeing away. His assumed brusquerie 
no longer availed him ; he was stricken with dismay ; his 
face lost color, and took on a warm paleness. All this 
was in a moment ; but the daughter of the house moved 
forward, and he was drawn within. Even then, though 
he assumed a calm demeanor, his agitation was very 
great : he stood by a table, and, taking up some small 
object that lay upon it, he found his hand trembling so 
that he was forced to put it down again. 

While friends were slowly penetrating his reserve in 
this way, he was approached in another by Mr. Good- 
rich, who induced him to go to Boston, there to edit the 
" American Magazine of Useful and Entertaining Knowl- 
edge." Tiiis work, which only continued from 1834 to 
September, 1837, was managed by several gentlemen un- 
der the name of tlie Bewick Company, One of these 
v^as Bowen, of Charlestown, an engraver ; another was 



170 THE AMERICAN MAGAZINE. 

Goodrich, who also, Ithhik, had some connection with the 
American Stationers' Company. The Bewick Company 
took its name from Thomas Bewick, the English restorer 
of the art of wood-engraving, and the magazine was to 
do liis memory honor by its admirable illustrations. But, 
in fact, it never did any one honor, nor brought any one 
profit. It was a penny popular affair, containing con- 
densed information about innumerable subjects, no fiction, 
and little poetry. The woodcuts were of the crudest and 
most frightful sort. It passed through the hands of sev- 
eral editors and several publishers. Hawthorne was en- 
gaged at a salary of five hundred dipllars a year ; but it 
appears that he got next to nothing, and that he did not 
stay in the position long. There is little in its pages 
to recall the identity of the editor; but in one place he 
quotes as follows from Lord Bacon : " The ointment which 
watches use is made of the fat of children digged from 
their graves, and of the juices of smallage, cinquefoil, and 
wolf's-bane, mingled with the meal of fine wheat," and 
hopes that none of his readers will try to compound it. 
In the tale of " Young Goodman Brown," when Goody 
Cloyse says, " I was all anointed with the juice of small- 
age and cinquefoil and wolf's-bane," and the Devil 
continues, " ' Mingled with fine wheat and the fat of a 
new-born babe,' — 'Ah, your worship knows the re- 
cipe,' cried the old lady, cackling aloud." A few scraps 
of correspondence, mostly undated, which I have looked 
over, give one a new view of him in the bustle and vexa- 
tion of this brief editorial experience. He sends off fre- 
quent and hurried missives to one of his sisters, M'ho 
did some of the condensing and compiling which was a 
part of the business. "I make nothing," he says, in one, 
" of writing a history or biography before dinner." At 
another time, he is in haste for a Life of Jefferson, but 



NON-PAYMENT OF SALAIIY. 171 

warns his correspondent to " see that it contains nothing 
heterodox." At the end of one of the briefest messages, 
he finds time to speak of the cat at home. Perhaps with 
a memory of the days when he built book-houses, he had 
taken two names of the deepest dye from Milton and 
Uunyan for two of his favorite cats, whom he called 
Beelzebub and Apollyon. "Pull Beelzebub's tail for 
me," he Avrites. But the following from Boston, Feb- 
ruary 15, 1836, gives the more serious side of the 
situation : — 

" I came here trusting to Goodrich's positive promise to pay 
me forty-five dollars as soon as I arrived; and he has kept 
])romisiiig from one day to another, till I do not see that he 
means to pay at all. I have now broke otf all intercourse with 

him, and never think of going near him I don't feel at 

all obliged to him about the editorship, for he is a stockholder 
and director in the Bewick Company ; . . . . and I defy them 
to get another to do for a thousand dollai's what I do for 
five hundred." 

Goodrich afterward sent his editor a small sum ; and 
tlie relations between them were resumed. A letter of 
May 5, in the same year, contains these allusions : — 

" I saw Mr. Goodrich yesterday He wants me to un- 
dertake a Universal History, to contain about as much as tifty 
or sixty pages of the magazine. [These were large pages.] If 
you are willing to write any part of it, .... I shall agree to do 
it. If necessary I will come home by and by, and concoct the 
plan of it with you. It need not be superior in. profundity and 

polish to the middling magazine articles I shall 

have nearly a dozen articles in The Token, — mostly quite 
short." 

The historical project is, of course, that which resulted 
in the famous " Peter Parley " work. " Our pay as his- 



172 "peter paeley" history. 

torians of the universe," says a letter written six days 
later, "will be about one Imndred dollars, the whole of 
which you may have. It is a poor compensation, but 
better than the Token ; because the writing is so much 
less difficult." He afterward carried out the design, or 
a large part of it, and the book has since sold by millions, 
for the benefit of others. There are various little partic- 
ulars in this ingenious abridgment which recall Haw- 
thorne, especially if one is familiar with his " Grandfather's 
Chair " and " True Stories " for children ; though the 
book has probably undergone some changes in successive 
editions. This ])assage about George IV. is, however, 
remembered as being his : " Even M'hen he was quite 
an old man, this king cared as much about dress as any 
young coxcomb. He had a great deal of taste in such 
matters, and it is a pity that he was a king, for he might 
otherwise have been an excellent tailor." 

Up to this time (May 12) he had received only twenty 
dollars for four months' editorial labor. " And, as you 
may well suppose," he says, "I have undergone very 
grievous vexations. Unless they pay me the whole 
amount shortly, 1 shall return to Salem, and stay there 
till they do." It seems a currish fate that puts such men 
into the grasp of paltry and sordid cares like these ! 
But there is something deeper to be felt than dissat- 
isfaction at the author-publisher's feeble though annoy- 
ing scheme of harnessing in this rare poet to be his unpaid 
yet paying hack. This deeper something is the pathos of 
such possibilities, and the spectacle of so renowned and 
strong-winged a genius consenting thus to take his share 
of worldly struggle ; perfectly conscious that it is wholly 
beneath his plane, but accepting it as a proper part of 
the mortal lot; scornful, but industrious and enduring. 
You who have conceived of Hawthorne as a soft-mar- 



. SCORN OF OBSTACLES. 173 

rowed dweller in the dusk, fostering liis own shyness and 
fearing to take the rubs of common men, pray look well 
at all this. And you, also, who discourse about the con- 
ditions essential to the development of genius, about the 
milieu and the moment, and try to prove America a vac- 
uum which the Muse abhors, will do well to consider 
the phenomenon. " It is a poor compensation, yet better 
than the Token " ; so he wrote, knowing that his un- 
matched tales were being coined for even a less reward 
than mere daily bread. He took the conditions that were 
about him, and gave them a dignity by his own fine per- 
severance. It is this inspired industry, this calm facing 
of the worst and making it the best, which has formed 
the Jiistory of all art. You talk of the ages, and choose 
this or that era as the only fit one. You long for a cosey 
niche in the past ; but genius crowds time and eternity 
into the present, and says to you, " Make your own 
century ! " 

Mean\vliile, if he received no solid gain from his exer- 
tions, Hawthorne was winning a reputation. In Janu- 
ary he had written home : " My worshipful self is a 
very famous man in London, the ' Athenaeum ' having 
noticed all my articles in the last Token, with long ex- 
tracts." This refers to the ' Athenaeum ' for November 7, 
1835, which mentioned " The Wedding Knell " and " The 
Minister's Black Veil" as being stories "each of whicli 
has singularity enough to recommend it to the reader," 
and gave three columns to a long extract from " The 
Maypole of Merry Mount " ; the notice being no doubt 
the work of tlie critic Chorley, who afterward met Haw- 
thorne in England. Thus encouraged, he thought of col- 
lecting his tales and publishing them in volume form, 
connected by the conception of a travelling story-teller, 
whose shiftings of fortune were to form the interludes 



174 FIKST VOLUME OF TALES. 

and links boiwcon iho separate stories. A portion of tliis, 
prefatory to "Dr. lleidegg-er's Experiment," lias been 
published in the "Mosses," with the heading of "Pus- 
sages from a llelinqnished Work." (unHirieh was not 
disjiosed to lavish npon his voung bendieiaiv the expense 
of brhiging out a book l\u- him, ami the plan of reprint- 
ing the tales with this framework around them was given 
u]>. The next year Bridge eame to (loodrieh and insisted 
on having a simple collection issued, liimself taking the 
pecuniary ri.sk. In this Mav the " Twiee-Told Tales" 
were lirst brought collectively before the world ; and for 
the second time this faithful comrade of Hawthorne laid 
])Osterily under obligation to himself. It was not till 
long afterward, however, that Hawthorne knew of his 
friend's interposition in the aflair. 

Mr. Bridge had not then entered the navy, and was 
engaged in a great enterprise on the Androscoggin ; 
nothing less than an attempt to dam u]> that river and 
a]>ply the watcr-jiower to some mills. In July of 1S37, 
Hawthorne went to visit him at Bridgton, and has 
described his impressions fully iu the Note-Books. It 
was probably his longest absence from Salem since gradu- 
ating!: at Bowdoin. " My circumstances cannot lomj; con- 
tinuc as they are," he writes; "and Bridge, too, stands 
between high prosperity and utter ruin." 

The change in his own circumslanccs Avhich Haw- 
thorne looked for did not come through his book. It 
sold some six or seven hundred copies in a short time, 
but was received quietly,* though Longfellow, then lately 

* Some of the sketches were reprinted in Englaiul ; and 
" A Ivill from the Town I*nnip " was eircnlateit in ]):nnplilet 
form by a London bookseller, without the author's name, as a 
temperance traet. 



LETTERS TO LONGFELLOW. 175 

established in liis Harvard professorship, and known as 
the author of " Outre-Mer," greeted it with enthusiasm 
in the " North American lleview/' which wielded a great 
influence in literary affairs. 

On March 7, 1837, Hawthorne sent this note to his 
former classmate, to announce the new volume. 

" The agent of the American Stationer's Conii)any will send 
you a copy of a bouk entitled 'Twice-Told Tales,' — of which, 
as a classmate, I venture to request your acceptance. We were 
not, it is true, so well acquainted at college, that I can plead 
an absolute right to inflict my 'twice-told ' tediousness upon 
you ; but I have often regretted that we were not batter known 
to each other, and have been glad of your success in literature 
and in more important matters." Returning to the tales, he 
adds : " I should like to flatter myself that they would repay 
you some part of the pleasure which I have derived from your 
own ' Outre-Mer.' Your obedient servant, 

"Nath. Hawthorne." 

Longfellow^ replied warmly, and in June Hawthorne 
■wrote again, a long letter picturing his mood with a fulness 
that sliows how keenly he had felt the honest sympathy of 
the poet. 

" Not to burden you with my correspondence," he said, " I 
have delayed a rejoinder to your very kind and cordial letter, 
until now. It gratifies me that you have occasionally felt an 
interest in my situation ; but your quotation from Jean Paul 
about the ' lark's nest ' makes me smile. You would have been 
much nearer the truth if you had pictured me as dwelling in 
an owl's nest ; for mine is about as dismal, and like the owl I 
seldom venture abroad till after dusk. By some witchcraft or 
other — for I really cannot assign any reasonable why and 
wherefore — I have been carried apart from the main current 
of life, and find it impossible to get back again. Since we last 



176 "AUTOBIOGRAPHIC EETEOSPECT. 

met, which yon remember was in SawteU's room, where yon 
read a farewell poem to the relics of the class, — ever since that 
time I have secluded myself from society ; and yet I never 
meant any such thing, nor dreamed what sort of life I was 
going to lead. I have made a captive of myself, and put me 
into a dungeon, and now 1 cannot find the key to let myself 
out, — and if the door were open, I should be almost afraid to 
come out. You tell me that you have met with troubles and 
changes. I know not what these may have been, but I can 
assure you that trouble is the next best thing to enjoyment, 
and that there is no fate in this world so horrible as to have no 
share in either its joys or sorrows. For the last ten years, I 
have not lived, but only dreamed of living. It may be true 
that there have been some unsubstantial pleasures here in the 
shade, which I might have missed in the sunshine, but you 
cannot conceive how utterly devoid of satisfaction all my ret- 
rospects are. I have laid up no treasure of pleasant remem- 
brances against old age ; but there is some comfort in thinking 
that future years can hardly fail to be more varied and therefore 
more tolerable than the past. 

" You give me more credit than I deserve, in supposing that 
I have led a studious life. I have indeed turned over a good 
many books, but in so desultory a way that it cannot be called 
study, nor has it left me the fruits of study. As to my literal y 
efforts, I do not think much of them, neither is it Avorth Avhile 
to be ashamed of them. They would have been better, I trust, 
if written under more favorable circumstances. I have had no 
external excitement, — no consciousness that the public would 
like what I wrote, nor much hope nor a passionate desire that 
they shoidd do so. Nevertheless, having nothing else to be 
ambitious of, I have been considerably interested in literature ; 
and if my writings had made any decided impression, I should 
have been stimulated to greater exertions ; but there has been 
no warmth of approbation, so that I have always written with 
benumbed fingers. I have another great difficulty in the lack 
of materials j for I have seen so little of the world that 1 have 



LONGFELLOW'S NOTICE. 177 

nothing but thin air to concoct my stories of, and it is not easy 
to give a lifelike semblance to such shadowy stuff. Sometimes 
through a peep-hole I have caught a glimpse of the real world, 
and the two or three articles in which I have portrayed these 
glimpses please me better than the others. 

" I have now, or shall soon have, a sharper spur to exertion, 
which I lacked at an earlier period ; for I see little prospect 
but that I shall have to scribble for a living. But this troubles 
me much less than you would suppose. I can turn my pen to 
all sorts of drudgery, such as children's books, etc., and by and 
by I shall get some editorship that will answer my purpose. 
I'rank Pierce, who was with us at college, offered me his influ- 
ence to obtain an office in the Exploring Expedition [Commo- 
dore Wilkes's] ; but I believe that he was mistaken in supjjos- 
iug that a vacancy existed. If such a post were attainable, I 
should certainly accept it ; for, though fixed so long to one 

sjjot, I have always had a desire to run round the world 

I intend in a week or two to come out of my owl's uest, and 
not return till late in the summer, — employing the interval in 
making a tour somewhere in New England. You who have 
the dust of distant countries on your ' sandal-shoon ' cannot 
imagine how much enjoyment I shall have in this little ex- 
cursion Yours sincerely, 

" Nath. Hawthorne." 

A few days later the quarterly, containing Longfel- 
low's review of the book, appeared ; and the note of 
thanks which Hawthorne sent is full of an exultation 
strouglj'^ in contrast with the pensive tone of the letter 
just given. 

Salem, June IQtli, 1837. 

Dear Longfellow: — I have to-day received, and read 

with huge delight, your review of ' Hawthorne's Tvvice-Told 

Tales.' I frankly own that I was not without hopes that you 

would do this kind office for the book ; though I could not 

8* L 



178 HAWTHORNE AND " EVANGELINE." 

have antioipated how very kindly it would be done. "Whether 
or no the public will agree to the praise which you bestow on 
me, there are at least five persons who think you the most 
sagacious critic on earth, viz., my mother and two sisters, my 
old maiden aunt, and finally the strongest believer of the whole 
five, my own self. If I doubt the sincerity and correctness 
of any of my critics, it shall be of those who censure me. 
Hard would be the lot of a poor scribbler, if he may not have 

this privilege 

Very sincerely yours, 

Nath. Hawthorne. 

That " Evangeline " was written upon a theme suggested 
to Hawthorne (by a friend avIio liad heard it from a 
Trencli Canadian *) and by him made over to the poet, 
Las already been made public, Hawthorne wrote, on its 
appearance : — • 

" I have read ' Evangeline ' with more pleasure than it would 
be decorous to express. It cannot fail, I think, to prove the 
most triumphant of all your successes.'"' 

Nevertheless, lie gave vent to some of his admiration 
in a notice of the work wliich he wrote for " The Salem 
Advertiser," a Democratic paper. 

" The story of Evangeline and her lover," he there says, " is 
as poetical as the fable of the Odyssey, besides that it comes to 
the heart as a fact that has actually taken place in human life." 
He speaks of " its pathos all illuminated with beauty, ^ — so that 
the impression of the poem is nowhere dismal nor despondent, 
and glows with the purest sunshine where we might the least 

expect it, on the pau])er's death-bed The story is told 

with the simplicity of high and exquisite art, which causes it to 

* See American Note-Books, October 24, 1839. 



LONGFELLOW TO HAWTHORNE. 179 

flow onward as naturally as the current of a stream. Evange- 
line's wanderings give occasion to many pictures both of north- 
ern and southern scenery and life : hut these do not appear as 
if brought in designedly, to adorn the tale ; they seem to throw 
their beauty inevitably into the calm mirror of its bosom as it 

flows past them By this work of his maturity he has 

placed himself on a higher eminence than he had yet attained, 
and beyond the reach of envy. Let him stand, then, at the 
head of our list of native poets, until some one else shall break 
up the rude soil of our American life, as he has done, and pro- 
duce from it a lovelier and nobler flower than this poem of 
Evangeline ! " 

' Longfellow's characteristic kindly reply was as fol- 
lows : — 

"My dear Haavthorne : — I have been waiting and wait- 
ing in the hope of seeing j'^ou in Cambridge I have 

been meditating upon youi- letter, and pondering with friendly 
admiration your review of ' Evangeline,' in connection with the 
subject of which, that is to say, the Acadians, a literary project 
arises in my mind for you to execute. Perhaps I can pay 
you back in part your own generous gift, by giving you a 
theme for story, in return for a theme for song. It is neither 
more nor less than the history of the Acadians, after their 
expulsion as well as before. Felton has been making some 
researches in the State archives, and offers to resign the docu- 
ments into your hands. 

" Pray come and see me about it without delay. Come so 
as to pass a night with us, if posssible, this week ; if not a day 
and night. 

" Ever sincerely yours, 

" Henry W. Longfellow." 

There is nothing in our literary annals more unique 
and delightful than this history of Longfellow's warm 



180 FAITH EGERTON'S SONG. 

recognition of liis old classmate, and the mutual courte- 
sies to which it led. One is reminded by it of the Wil- 
liam Tell episode between Goethe and Scluller, though it 
was in this case only the theme and nothing of material 
that was transferred. 

An author now almost forgotten, Charles Eenno Hoff- 
man, also published in " The American Monthly Maga- 
zine," * which he was editing, a kindly review, which, 
however, underestimated the strength of the new genius, 
as it was at first the general habit to do. "Minds like 
Hawthorne's," he said, " seem to be the only ones suited 

to an American climate Never can a nation be 

impregnated with the literary spirit by minor authors 

alone Yet men like Hawthorne are not without 

their use." .... In this same number of the magazine, 
by the way, was printed Hawthorne's " Threefold Des- 
tiny," under the pseudonyme of Ashley Allen Royce ; 
and tlie song of Faith Egerton, afterward omitted, is thus 
given : — 

" 0, man can seek the downAvard glance, 

And each kind word, — affection's spell, — 
Eye, voice, its value can enhance ; 

Eor eye may speak, and tongue can tell. 

" But woman's love, it waits the while 
To echo to another's tone ; 
To linger on another's smile. 

Ere dare to answer with its own." 

These versicles, though they might easily be passed over 
as commonplace, hold a peculiar inner radiance that per- 
haps issued from the dawn of a lifelong happiness for 
Hawthorne at this period. 

* For March, 1838. 



AT BOSTON AND BROOK FARM. 



1838-1842. 




flWTHORNE'S mood at this time was one of 
profound dissatisfaction at liis elimination from 
the active life of the world. "I am tired of 
being an ornament," he said, with great emphasis, to a 
friend. *' I want a little piece of land that I can call my 
own, big enough to stand upon, big enough to be buried 
in. I want to have something to do with this material 
world." And, striking his hand vigorously on a table 
that stood by : " If I could only make tables," he de- 
clared, " I should feel myself more of a man," He was 
now thirty-four, and the long restraint and aloofness of 
the last thirteen years, with the gathering consciousness 
that he labored under unjust reproach of inaction, and 
the sense of loss in being denied his share in affairs, had 
become intolerable. It was now, also, that a new phase 
of being was opened to him. He had become engaged to 
Miss Sophia Peabody, a sister of his friend. 

President Yan Buren had been two years in office, and 
Mr. Bancroft, the historian, was Collector of the port of 
Boston, One evening the latter was speaking, in a circle 
of Whig friends, of the splendid things which the Demo- 
cratic administration was doing for literary men. "But 
there 's Hawthorne," suggested a ladj who was present. 



182 HAWTHORNE AS A DEMOCRAT. 

*' You've done nothing for liim." "He won't take any- 
thing," was the answer : " he has been offered places." 
In fact, Hawthorne's friends in pohtical life had urged 
liim to enter politics, and he had at one time been ten- 
dered a post of some sort in the West Indies, but refused 
it because he would not live in a slaveholding commu- 
nity. " I happen to know," said the lady, " that he 
would be very glad of employment." The result was 
that a commission for a small post in the Boston Custom 
House came, soon after, to the young author. On gohig 
down from Salem to inquire further about it, he received 
another and a better appointment as weigher and gauger, 
with a salary, I think, of twelve hundred a year. Just 
before entering the Collector's office, he noticed a man 
leaving it who wore a very dejected air; and, connecting 
tliis witli the change in his own appointment, he imagined 
this person to be the just-ejected weigher. Speaking of 
this afterward, he said : " I don't believe in rotation in 
office. It is not good for the human being." But he 
took his place, writing to Longfellow (January 12, 1S39) : 

" I have no reason to doubt my capacity to fulfil the duties ; 
for I don't know what they are. They tell me that a consider- 
able portion of my time will be unoccupied, the which I mean 
to employ in sketches of my new experience, under some such 
titles as follows : ' Scenes in Dock,' ' Voyages at Anchor,' 
'Nibblings of a Wharf Rat,' 'Trials of a Tide -Waiter,' 
'Romance of the Revenue Service,' together with an ethical 
work in two volumes, on the subject of Duties, the first volume 
to treat of moral and religious duties, and the second of duties 
imposed by the Revenue Laws, which I begin to consider the 
most important class." 

Two years later, when Harrison and Tyler carried the 
election for the Whigs, he suffered the fate of his prede- 
cessor. ■ 



CUSTOM-HOUSE SERVICE. 183 

And here I may offer au opinion as to Hawthorne's 
connection with the Democratic party. Wlien asked why 
he belonged to it, lie answered that he lived in a demo- 
cratic country. "But we are all republicans alike," was 
the objection to his defence. "Well," he said, " I don't 
understand history till it 's a hundred years old, and mean- 
time it 's safe to belong to the Democratic party." Still, 
Hawthorne was, so far as it comported with his less tran- 
sient aims, a careful observer of public affairs; and mere 
badinage, like that just quoted, must not be taken as really 
covering the ground of his choice in politics. A man of 
such deep insight, accustomed to bring it to bear upon 
everything impartially, was not to be influenced by any 
blind and accidental preference in these questions ; albeit 
his actual performance of political duties was slight. I 
think he recognized the human strength of the Demo- 
cratic, as opposed to the theorizing and intellectual force 
of the Republican party. It is a curious fact, that with 
us the party of culture should be the radical party, up- 
holding ideas even at the expense of personal liberty ; 
and the party of ignorance that of order, the conser- 
vating force, careful of personal liberty even to a fault ! 
Hawthorne, feeling perhaps that ideas work too rapidly 
here, ranged himself on the side that offered the greater 
resistance to them. 

This term of service in Boston was of course irksome 
to Hawthorne, and entirely suspended literary endeavors 
for the time. Yet " my life only is a burden," he writes, 

" in the same way that it is to every toilsome man 

But from henceforth forever I shall be entitled to call 
the sons of toil my brethren, and shall know how to sym- 
pathize with them, seeing that I likewise have risen at 
the dawn, and borne the fervor of the midday sun, nor 
turned my heavy footsteps homeward till eventide." He 



184 ORIGIN OF BROOK FARM. 

need not always liave made the employment so severe, 
but tlie wages of the wharf laborers depended on the 
number of hours they worked in a day, and Hawthorne 
used to make it a point in all weathers, to get to the 
wharf at the earliest possible hour, solely for their bene- 
fit. Tor the rest, he felt a vast benefit from his new in- 
tercourse with men ; there could not have been a better 
maturing agency for him at this time ; and the interval 
served as an apt introduction to the Brook Farm epi- 
sode. 

That this least gregarious of men should have been 
drawn into a socialistic community, seems at first inex- 
plicable enough ; but in reality it was the most logical 
step he could have taken. He had thoroughly tried 
seclusion, and had met and conquered by himself the 
first realization of what the world actually is. Next, he 
entered into the performance of definite duties and Hie 
receipt of gain, and watched the operation of these two 
conditions on himself and those about him; an experi- 
ment that taught him the evils of the system, and the 
necessity of burying his better energies so long as he 
took part in affairs. This raised doubts, of course, as to 
how he was to fit himself into the frame of things ; and 
while he mused upon some more generous arrangement 
of society, and its conflicting interests, a scheme was 
started which plaiuly proposed to settle the problem. 
Fourier had only just passed away; tlie spread of his 
ideas was in its highest momentum. On the other hand, 
the study of German philosophy, and the new dissent of 
Emerson, had carried men's thoughts to the very central 
springs of intellectual law, while in Boston the writing 
and preaching of Channing roused a practical radicalism, 
and called for a better application of Christianity to af- 
fairs. The era of the Trauscendentalists had come. The 



NATURE OF THE SCHEME. 185 

Cliardon Street meetings — assemblages of ardent theo- 
rists and "come-outers" of every type, who, while their 
sessions lasted, held society in their hands and moulded 
it like elay — were a rude manifestation of the same 
deep current. In the midst of these influences, Mr. Rip- 
ley, an enthusiastic student of pliilosophy, received an in- 
spiration to establish a modified socialislic community on 
our own soil. The Industrial Association which he pro- 
posed at West Roxbury was wisely planned with direct 
reference to the emergencies of American life ; it had no 
affinity with the erratic views of Enfantin and the Saint 
Simonists, nor did it in the least tend toward the mis- 
takes of Robert Owen regarding the relation of the 
sexes ; though it agreed with Fourier and Owen both, as 
I understand, in respect of labor. In a better and freer 
sense than has usually been the case with such attempts, 
the design sprang out of one man's mind and fell prop- 
erly under his control. His simple object was to dis- 
tribute labor in such a way as to give all men time for 
culture, and to free their minds from the debasing influ- 
ence of a merely selfish competition. It was a practical, 
orderly, noble effort to apply Christianity directly to hu- 
man customs and institutions. " A few men and women 
of like views and feelings," one of his sympathizers has 
said, " grouped themselves around him, not as their mas- 
ter, but as their friend and brother, and the community 
at Brook Farm was instituted." At various times Charles 
Dana, Pratt, the young Brownson, Horace Sumner (a 
younger brother of Charles), George William Curtis, and 
his brother Burrill Curtis were there. The place was a 
kind of granary of true grit. People who found their 
own honesty too heavy a burden to carry successfully 
through the rough jostlings of society, flocked thither. 
" They were mostly individuals " says Hawthorne, " who 



186 HAWTHOENE^S ACCESSION. 

liad gone tlirougli such an experience as to disgust tliem 
with ordinary pursuits, but who were not yet so old, nor 
had suffered so deeply, as to lose their faith in the better 
time to come." 

To men like Hawthorne, however little they may 
noise the fact abroad, the rotten but tenacious timbers 
of the social order shake beneath the lightest tread. 
But he knew that the only wise metliod is to begin 
repairing within the edifice, keeping the ^old associa- 
tions, and losing nothing of value whilo gaining every- 
thing new that is desirable. Because Brook Farm seemed 
to adopt this principle, he went there. Some of the 
meetings of the associators were held at Miss E. P. 
Peabody's, in Boston, and the proceedings were related 
to him. Mr. Ripley did not at first know who was tlie 
" distinguished literary gentleman " announced as willing 
to join the company ; and when told that it was Haw- 
thorne, he felt as if a miracle had befallen, or " as if," 
he tells me, " the heavens would presently be filled with 
angels, and we- should see Jacob's ladder before us. But 
we never came any nearer to having that, than our old 
ladder in the barn, from floor to hayloft." Por his per- 
sonal benefit, Hawthorne had two ends in view, con- 
nected with Brook Parm : one, to find a suitable and 
economical home after marriage ; the other, to secure a 
mode of life thoroughly balanced and healthy, which 
should successfully distribute the sum of his life's labor 
between body and brain. He hoped to secure leisure 
for writing by perhaps six hours of daily service ; but 
he found nearly sixteen needful. " He worked like a 
dragon," says Mr. Ripley. 

The productive industry of the association was agri- 
culture ; the leading aim, teaching ; and in some cases 
there Avere classes made up of men, women, children, 



COMMUNITY SCENES. 187 

wliom ignorance put on the same plane. Several build- 
ings accommodated the members : the largest, in which 
the public table was spread and the cooking done, being 
called The Hive ; another, The Pilgrim House ; a smaller 
one, Tlie Nest ; and still another was known as The Cot- 
tage. In Tlie Ejrie, Mr. and Mrs. Riplej lived, and 
here a great part of the associators would gather in the 
evenings. Of a summer night, when the moon was full, 
they lit no lamps, but sat grouped in the light and 
shadow, while sundry of the younger men sang old bal- 
lads, or joined Tom Moore's songs to operatic airs. On 
other nights, there would be an original essay or poem 
read aloud, or else a play of Shakespere, with the parts 
distributed to different members ; and, these amusements 
failing, some interesting discussion was likely to take 
their place. Occasionally, in the dramatic season, large 
delegations from the farm would drive into Boston in 
carriages and wagons to the opera or the play. Some- 
times, too, the young women sang as they washed the 
dishes, in The Hive ; and the youthful yeomen of the 
society came in and helped them with their work. The 
men wore blouses of a checked or plaided stuff, belted 
at the waist, with a broad collar folding down about 
the throat, and rough straw hats ; the women, usually, 
simple calico gowns, and hats, — wdiich were then an 
innovation in feminine attire. In the season of wood- 
w^anderings, they would trim their hats with wreaths of 
barberry or hop-vine, ground-pine, or whatever offered, 
— a suggestion of the future Priscilla of " Blithedale." 
Some families and students came to the farm as boarders, 
paying for their provision in household or field labor, or 
by teaching ; a method which added nothing to the funds 
of the establishment, and in this way rather embarrassed 
it. A great deal of individual liberty was allowed. Peo- 



188 DIFFICULTIES. 

pie could eat in private or public ; and it lias been said 
by those who were there that the unconventional life 
permitted absolute privacy at any time. Every one was 
quite unfettered, too, in the sphere of religious worship. 
When a member wished to be absent, another would 
generally contrive to take his work for the interval ; 
and a general good-will seems to have prevailed. Still, 
I imagine there must have been a temporary and uncer- 
tain air about the enterprise, much of the time ; and the 
more intimate unions of some among the members who 
were congenial, gave rise to intermittent jealousies in those 
who found no special circle. " In this way it was very 
much like any small town of the same number of inhabi- 
tants," says one of my informants. Indeed, though every 
one who shared in the Brook Earm attempt seems grate- 
ful for what it taught of the dignity and the real fellow- 
ship of labor, I find a general belief in such persons that 
it could not long have continued at its best. The sys- 
tem of compensating all kinds of service, skilled or other- 
wise, according to the time used, excited — as some have 
thought — much dissatisfaction even among the generous 
and enlightened people who made up the society. " I 
thought I could see some incipient difficulties working 
in the system," writes a lady who was there in 1841. 
" Questions already arose as to how much individual 
freedom could be allowed, if it conflicted with the best 
interests of the whole. Those who came there were the 
results of another system of things Avhich still gave a 
salutary check to the more radical tendencies ; but the 
second generation there could hardly have shown equal, 
certainly not the same, character." A confirmation of 
this augury is "the fact that the cast of the community 
became decidedly more Eourieristic before it disbanded ; 
and it is not impossible that another generation might 



EFFECT OP THIS EPISODE. 189 

have decolorized and seriously deformed human existence 
among them. Theories and opinions were very o|)enly 
talked over, and practical details as well ; and though* 
this must have had its charm, yet it would also touch 
uncomfortably on a given temperament, or jar upon a 
peculiar mood. In such enterprises tliere must always 
1)6 a slight inclination to establish a conformity to certain 
freedoms which really become oppressions. Shyness was 
not held essential to a regenerated state of things, and 
Avas perhaps too much disregarded; as also was illness, 
an emergency not clearly provided for, which liad to be 
met by individual effort and self-sacrifice, after the self- 
ish and old-established fashion of the world. How this 
atmosphere affected Hawthorne he has hinted in his 
romance founded on some aspects of community life : 
"Though fond of society, I was so constituted as to 
need these occasional retirements, even in a life like that 
of Blithedale, which was itself characterized by a remote- 
ness from the world. Unless renewed by a yet further 
withdrawal towards the inner circle of self-communion, 
I lost the better part of my individuality. My thoughts 
became of little worth, and my sensibilities grew as arid 
as a tuft of moss .... crun)bling in the sunshine, after 
long expectance of a shower." A fellow-toiler came upon 
him suddenly, one day, lying in a green hollow some dis- 
tance from the farm, with his hands under his head and 
Ins face shaded by his hat. " How came you out here ? " 
asked his friend. " Too much of a party up there," was 
his answer, as he pointed toward the community build- 
ings. It has also been told that at leisure times he 
would sit silently, hour after hour, in the broad old- 
fashioned hall of The Hive, where he " could listen 
almost unseen to the chat and merriment of the young 
people," himself almost always liolding a book before 
hiui, but seldom turning the leaves. 



190 ANECDOTES. 

One sees in liis letters of this time* Low the life wore 
upon him ; and his journal apparently ceased during the 
whole bucolic experience. How joyously his mind begins 
to disport itself again with fancies, the moment lie leaves 
the association, even temporarily ! And in 1842, as 
soon as he is fairly quit of it, the old darkling or way- 
wardly gleaming stream of thouglit and imagination flows 
freshly, untamably forward. Hawthorne remained with 
the Brook Farm community nearly a twelvemon'h, a 
small part of which time was spent in Boston. Some of 
the letters which his sisters M^rote him show a delightful 
solicitude reigning at home, during the period of his 
experiment. 

"What is the use," says one, "of burning your brains out 
in the sun, if you can do anything better with them ? . . . . 
I am bent upon coming to see you, this summer. Do not you 
remember how we used to go a-fishing together iu llaymond ? 
Your mention of wMld tlowers and pickerel has given me a loug- 
ing for the woods and waters again." 

Then, in August, 

"C A ," writes his sister Louisa, "told me the 

other day that he heard you were to do the travelling in Eu- 
rope for the community." 

This design, if it ex.isted, might well have found a 
place in the Dialogues of the Unborn which Hawthorne 
once meant to write ; for this was his only summer at 
Brook Farm. "A summer of toil, of interest, of some- 
thing that was not ])leasure, but which went deep into my 
heart, and there became a ricli experience," he writes, in 
" Blithedale." " I found myself looking forward to years, 

* American Note-Books, Vol. I. 



LEAVES THE COMMUNITY. 191 

if not to a lifetime, to be spent on tlie same system." 
This was, in fact, his attitude ; for, after passing the 
winter at the farm as a boarder, and then absenting him- 
self a little while, he returned in the spring to look over 
the ground and perhaps select a house-site, just before 
his marriage, but came to an adverse decision. This no 
doubt accorded with perceptions which he was not called 
upon to make public ; but because he was a Avriter of 
fiction there seeuis to have arisen a tacit agreement, in 
some quarters, to call him insincere in his connection 
with this socialistic enterprise. He had not much to 
gain by leaving the community; for he had put into its' 
treasury a thousand dolkirs, about tlie whole of his sav- 
ings from the custom-house stipend, and had next to 
nothing to establish a home with elsewhere, while a 
niche in the temple of the reformers would have cost 
him nothing but labor. The length of his stay was by 
no means uncommonly short, for there was always a tran- 
sient contingent at Brook Farm, many of whom remained 
but a few weeks. A devoted but not a wealthy disciple, 
who had given six thousand dollars for the building of the 
Pilgrim House, and hoped to end his days within it, re- 
tired forever after a very short sojourn, not dissuaded 
from the theory, but convinced that the practical applica- 
tion was foredoomed to disaster. And, in truth, though 
a manful eifort was made, with good pecuniary success 
for a time, ten years brought the final hour of failure to 
this millennial plan. 

Very few people who were at Brook Earm seem to 
have known or even to have seen Hawthorne there, 
though he was elected chairman of the Finance Commit- 
tee just before leaving, and I am told that his handsome 
presence, his quiet sympathy, his literary reputation, and 
his hearty participation in labor commanded a kind of 



192 BROOK FARM ASSOCIATES. 

reverence from some of the members. Next to Lis friend 
George P. Bradford, one of the workers and teachers in 
tlie community, his most frequent associates were a cer- 
tain Rev. Warren Burton, author of a curious little book 
called " Scenery-Sliower," designed to develop a proper 
taste for landscape ; and one Trauk Farley, who had been 
a pioneer in the West, a man of singular experiences and 
of an original turn, who was subject to mental derange- 
ment at times. The latter visited him at tlie Old Manse, 
afterward, when Hawthorne was alone tiiere, and entered 
actively into his makeshift housekeeping. 

President Pierce, on one occasion, speaking to an ac- 
quaintance about Hawthorne, said : " He is enthusiastic 
when he speaks of the aims and self-sacrifice of some of 
the Brook Parm people; but M'hen I questioned him 
whether he would hke to live and die in a connn unity 
like that, he confessed he was not suited to it, but said 
he had learned a great deal from it. 'What, for in- 
stance ? ' ' Why, marketing, for one thing. I did n't 
know anything about it practically, and I rode into Bos- 
ton once or twice with the men who took in things to sell, 
and saw how it was done.' " The things of deepest mo- 
ment which he learned were not to be stated fully in 
conversalion ; but I suppose readers would draw the 
same inference from this whimsical climax of Hawthorne's 
as that which has been found in " The Blithedale llo- 
mance " ; namely, that he looked on his socialistic life as 
the merest jesting matter. Such, I Ihink, is the general 
' opinion ; and a socialistic writer, Mr. Noyes, of the 
Oneida Community, has indignantly cried out against the 
book, as a " poetico-sneering romance." This study of 
human character, which would keep its value in any state 
of society that preserved its reflective faculty intact and 
sane, to be belittled to the record of a brief experi- 



THE BEAUING OF " BLITHEDALE." 193 

ment! Hawthorne indeed, speaking in the prefatory 
third person of his own aim, says : " His whole treat- 
ment of the affair is altogether incidental to the main 
purpose of the romance ; nor does he put forward tlie 
slightest pretensions to illustrate a theory, or elicit a 
conclusion, favorable or otherwise, in respect to social- 
ism." And though he has told the story autobio- 
graphically, it is through a character whom we ought 
by no means to identify with Hawthorne in his whole 
mood. I have taken the liberty of applying to Haw- 
thorne's own experience two passages from Coverdale's 
account, because they picture something known to be the 
case ; and a careful sympathy will find no difficulty in 
distinguishing how much is real and how much assumed. 
Coverdale, being merely the medium for impressions of 
the other characters, is necessarily light and diaphanous, 
and Hawthorne, finding it more convenient, and an ad- 
vantage to the lifelikeness of the story, does not attempt 
to hold him up in the air all the time, but lets him down 
now and then, and assumes the part himself. The allu- 
sions to the community scheme are few, and most of 
them are in the deepest way sympathetic. Precisely be- 
cause the hopes of the socialists were so unduly high, 
he values them and still is glad of them, though they 
have fallen to ruin. " In my own behalf, I rejoice that 
I could once think better of the world than it deserved. 
It is a mistake into which men seldom fall twice in a 
lifetime ; or, if so, the rarer and higher is the nature 
that can thus magnanimously persist in error." "Where 
is the sneer concealed in this serious and comprehensive 
utterance ? There is a class of two-pronged minds, 
which seize a pair of facts eagerly, and let the truth 
drop out of sight between them. For these it is enough 
that Hawthorne made some use of his Brook Farm mem- 
9 M 



194 MISCONSTRUCTIONS. 

ories in a romance, and then wrote that romance in tlie 
first person, with a few clashes of Immor. 

Another critic, acting on a conventional idea as to Haw- 
thorne's " cold, self-removed obsei'vation," quotes to his 
disadvantage this paragraph in a {etter from Brook Farm : 
" Nothing here is settled. . . . •. My mind will not be 
abstracted, I must observe and think and feel, and 
content m_yself with catciiing glimpses of things which 
may be wrought out hereafter. Perliaps it will be quite 
as well that I find myself unable to set seriously about 
literary occupation for the present." This is offered as 
showing that Hawthorne went to the community — un- 
consciously, admits our critic, but still in obedience to 
some curious, chilly " dictate of his nature " — for the 
simple purpose of getting fresh impressions, to work up 
into fiction. Bu| no one joined the society expecting 
to give up his emire individuality, and it was a special 
part of the design^that each should take such share of the 
labor as was for 'liis own and the general good, and fol- 
low his own tastes entirely as to ideal pursuits. A sin- 
gular prerogative this, which every one who writes about 
Hawthorne lays claim to, that he may be construed as a 
man wlio, at bottom, had no other motive in life than to 
make himself uneasy by withdrawing from hearty com- 
munion with people, in order to pry upon them intellec- 
tually ! He speaks of " that quality of the intellect and 
the heart which impelled me (often against my own will, 
and to the detriment of my own comfort) to live in 
other lives, and to endeavor — hy generous sympathies, by 
delicate intuitions, by taking note of things too slight for 
record, and by bringing my human spirit into manifold 
accordance with the companions God had assigned me 
— to learn the secret which was hidden even from them- 
selves " ; and this is cited as evidence of " his cold in- 



WHY HAWTHORNE WlTHDllEW. 195 

quisitiveuess, liis incredulity, his determination to worm 
out the inmost secrets of all associated with him." Such 
distortion is amazing. The few poets who search con- 
stantly for truth are certainly impelled to get at the in- 
most of everything. But what, in Heaven's name, is the 
motive ? Does any one seriously suppose it to be for the 
amusement of making stories out of it ? The holding up 
to one's self the stern and. secret realities of life is no such 
pleasing pursuit. These men are driven to it by the di- 
vine impulse which has made them seers and recorders. 

As for Hawthorne, he hoped and loved and planned 
with the same rich human faith that fills the heart of 
every manly genius ; and if discouraging truth made him 
suffer, it was all the more because his ideals — -and at 
first his trust in their realization — were so generous and 
so high. Two of his observations as to Brook Farm, 
transferred to the " The Blithedale Romance/' show the 
wisdom on which his withdrawal was based. The first 
relates to himself : " No sagacious man will long retain 
his sagacity, if he live exclusively among reformers and 
progressive people, without periodically returning to the 
settled system of things, to correct himself by a new ob- 
servation from that old standpoint." He iiad too much 
imagination to feel safe in giving free rein to it, in a spe- 
cial direction of theoretic conduct ; he also remembered 
that, as the old system of things was full of error, it was 
possible that a new one might become so in new ways, 
unless watched. The second observation touches the 
real weakness of the Brook Earm institution : " It struck 
me as rather odd, that one of the first questions raised, 
after our separation from the greedy, struggling, self- 
seeking world, should relate to the possibility of get- 
ting the advantage over the outside barbarians in their 
own field of labor. But to own the truth, I very soon 



196 THE COllE OF THE MATTER, 

became sensible that, as regarded society at large, we 
stood in, a position of 7iew hostility rather than new brother- 
hood." And, ill fact, the real good which Mr. Ripley's 
attempt did, was to implant the co-operative idea in the 
minds of men who have gone out into the world to 
effect its gradual application on a grander scale. It is 
by introducing it into one branch of social energy after 
another that the regenerative agency of to-day can alone 
be made effectual. The leaders of that community have 
been broad-minded, and recognize this truth. None of 
them, however, have ever taken the trouble to formulate 
it as Hawthorne did, on perceiving it some years in ad- 
vance. 

The jocose tone, it maybe added, seems to have been a 
characteristic part of the Brook Farm experiment, despite 
the sober earnest and rapt enthusiasm that accompanied 
it. The members had their laughing allusions, and talked 
— in a strain of self- ridicule precisely similar to Cover- 
dale's — of having bauds of music to play for the field- 
laborers, who should plough in tune. This merely proves 
that they were people who kept their wits whole, and 
had the humor that comes with refinement ; while it illus- 
trates by the way the naturalness of the tone Hawthorne 
has given to Coverdale. 

The Priscilla of Blithedale was evidently founded upon 
the little sf amstress whom he describes in the Note- 
Books as coming out to the farm, and Old Hoodie's spec- 
tre can be discerned in a brief memorandum of a man 
seen (at Parker's old bar-room in Court Square) in 1850. 
It has been thought that Zenobia was drawn from Mar- 
garet Fuller, or from a lady at Brook Farm, or perhaps 
from both: a gentleman who was there says that he 
traces in her a partial likeness to several women. It is 
as well to remember that Hawthorne distinctly negatived 



ORIGIN OF ZENOBIA. 197 

the idea tliat lie wrote witli any one tliat he knew before 
liis mind ; and he illustrated it, to one of his most inti- 
mate friends, by saying that sometimes in the course of 
composition it would suddenly occur to him, that the 
character he was describing resembled in some point one 
or more persons of his acquaintance. Thus, I suppose 
that when the character of Priscilla had developed itself 
in his imagination, he found he could give her a greater 
reality by associating her with the seamstress alluded to ; 
and that the plaintive old man at Parker's offered himself 
as a good figure to prop up the web-work of pure inven- 
tion which was the history of Zenobia's and Priscilla's 
father. There 'is a conviction in the minds of all readers, 
dearer to them than truth, that novelists simply sit down 
aud describe their own acquaintances, using a few clumsy 
disguises to make the thing tolerable. When they do 
take a hint from real persons the character becomes quite 
a different thing to them from the actual prototype. It 
was not even so definite as this with Hawthorne. Yet no 
doubt, his own atmosphere being peculiar, the contrast 
between that and the atmosphere of those he met stimu- 
lated his imagination ; so that, without his actually see- 
ing a given trait in another person, the meeting might 
have the effect of suggesting it. Then he would brood 
over this suggestion till it became a reality, a person, to 
his mind ; and thus his characters were conceived inde- 
pendently in a region somewhere between himself and the 
people who had awakened speculation in his mind. 

He had a very sure instinct as to when a piece of 
reality might be transferred to his fiction with advantage. 
Mr. Curtis has told the story of a young woman of Con- 
cord, a farmer's daughter, who had had her aspirations 
roused by education until the conflict between these and 
the hard and barren life she was born to, made her thor- 



198 USE or A EEAL INCIDENT. 

ouglily miserable and morbid ; and one summer's evening 
she sought relief in the quiet, homely stream that flowed 
by the Old Manse, and found the end of earthly troubles 
in its oozy depths. Hawthorne was roused by Curtis 
himself coming beneath his window (precisely as Cover- 
dale comes to summon Hollingsworth), and with one 
other they went out on the river, to find the poor girl's 
body. "The man," writes his friend, "whom the vil- 
lagers had only seen at morning as a musing spectre in 
the garden, now appeared among them at night to devote 
Lis stronar arm and steadv heart to their service." 

By this dark memory is the powerful climax of " The 
Blithedale Romance " bound to the sphere of a reality as 
dread. 





VI. 



THE OLD MANSE. 



1842-1846. 




reers. 



HERE is a Providence m tlie lives of men who 
act sincerely, wliicli makes each step lead, with 
the best result, to the next phase of their ca- 
By his participation in the excellent endeavor at 
Brook Earm, Hawthorne had prepared himself to enjoy 
to the full his idyllic retirement at the Old Manse, in 
Concord. " Eor now, being happy," he says, " I felt as 
if there were no question to be put." 

Hawthorne was married in July, 1842, and went at 
once to this his first home. Just before going to Brook 
Earm he had written " Grandfather's Chair," the first part 
of a series of sketches of New England history for chil- 
dren, which was published by Miss Peabody in Boston, 
and Wiley and Putnam in New York ; but the continua- 
tion was interrupted by his stay at the farm. In 1842 he 
wrote a second portion, and also some biographical sto- 
ries, all of which gained an immediate success. He also 
resuiiv^ his contributions to the " Democratic Review," 
the most brilliant periodical of the time, in which Whittier, 
Longfellow, Lowell, Poe, and other noted authors made 
their appearance. It was published at Washington, and 
afterward at New York, and made considerable preten- 



200 INCREASE OF EEPUTATION. 

sions to a national cliaracter. Hawthorne liaci been en- 
gaged as a contributor, at a fair rate, in 1838, and his 
articles had his name appended (not always the practice 
at that time) in a way that shows the high estimation into 
which lie had already grown. " John Iiiglefield's Thanks- 
giving," " The Celestial Railroad," " The Procession of 
Life," "Pire Worship," "Buds and Bird Voices," and 
" Roger Malvin's Burial," all appeared in the "Demo- 
cratic " in 1843. " Rappaccini's Daughter " and otlier tales 
followed in the next year ; and in 1845 the second vol- 
ume of "Twice-Told Tales " was brought out at Boston. 
During the same year Hawthorne edited the " African 
Journals " of his friend Bridge, then an officer in the navy, 
who had just completed a cruise. The editor's name evi- 
dently carried great weight, even then. " The mere an- 
nouncement, ' edited by Nathaniel Hawthorne,' " said one 
of the critics, " is enough to entitle this book to a place 
among the American classics." I dwell upon this, be- 
cause an attempt has been made to spread the idea that 
Hawthorne up to the time of writing " The Scarlet Let- 
ter " was still obscure and discouraged, and that only tlien, 
by a timely burst of appreciation iu certain quarters, was 
he rescued from oblivion. The truth is, that he had won 
himself an excellent position, was popular, and was him- 
self aware by this time of the honor in which he was held. 
Even when he found that the small profits of literature 
were forcing him into office again, he wrote to Bridge : 
•'It is rather singular that I should need an office: for 
nobody's scribbliugs seem to be more acceptable than 
mine." The explanation of this lies in the wretchedly de- 
pendent state of native authorship at that time. Tlie law 
of copyright had not then attained to even the refined in- 
justice which it has now reached. " I continue," he wrote, 
in. 1844, " to scribble tales with good success so far as re- 



EAGER PUBLISHERS. 201 

gards empty praise, some notes of wliicli, pleasant enoup^h 
to my ears, have come from across the Atlantic. But the 
pamphlet and piratical system has so broken up all regu- 
lar literature, that I am forced to work hard for small 
gains." 

Besides the labors already enumerated, he edited for 
the " Democratic " some " Papers of an old Dartmoor 
Prisoner " (probably some one of his " sea-dog " ac- 
quaintance in Salem). He was in demand among the 
])ublishers. A letter from Evert Duyckinck (New York, 
October 2, 1845), who was then in the employ of Wiley 
and Putnaui, publishers of the "African Cruiser," says 
of that book : " The English notices are bounteous in 
praise. No American book in a long time has been 
so well noliced." The same firm were now eager to 
bring out his recent tales, and were also, as appears in 
the following from Duyckinck, urging the prosecution 
of another scheme : " 1 hope you will not think me a 
troublesome fellow," he writes, "if I drop you another 
line with the vociferous cry, MSS. ! MSS. ! Mr. Wiley's 
American series is athirst for the volumes of tales-; and 
how stands the prospect for the History of Witchcraft, 
I whilom spoke of?" The History Hawthorne wisely 
eschewed ; but early in 1816 the " Mosses from an Old 
Manse " was issued at New York, in two volumes. 

This attracted at once a great deal of praise, and it 
certainly shows a wider range and fuller maturity than 
the first book of "Twice-Told Tales"; yet I 'doubt 
whether the stories of this group have taken such intimate 
hold of any body of readers as those, although recom- 
mending themselves to a larger audience. Hawthorne's 
life at the Old Manse was assuredly one of the brightest 
epochs of his career : an unalloyed happiness had come to 
him, he was full of the delight of first possession in his 
9 * 



202 LIFE AT THE MANSE. 

home, a new and ample companionship was his, and the 
qniet course of the days, witli their openings into healthful 
outdoor exercise, made a perfect balance between creation 
and recreation. The house in which he dwelt was itself 
a little island of the past, standing intact above the flood 
of events ; all around was a mild, cultivated country, 
broken into gentle variety of " hills to live with," and 
touched with just enough wildness to keep him from 
tiring of it : the stream that flowed by his orchard was 
for him an enchanted river. He renewed tlie pleasant 
sports of boyhood with it, fishing and boating in summer, 
and in winter whistling over its clear, black ice, on rapid 
skates. In the more genial months, the garden gave 
him pleasant employment ; and in his journal-musings, 
the thought gratifies him that he has come into a primi- 
tive relation with nature, and that the two occupants of 
the Manse are in good faith a new Adam and Eve, so 
far as the happiness of that immemorial pair remained 
unbroken. The charm of these experiences has all been 
distilled into the descriptive chapter which prefaces the 
" Mosses " ; and such more personal aspects of it as could 
not be mixed in that vintage have been gathered, like for- 
gotten clusters of the harvest, into the Note-Books. It 
remains to comment, here, on the contrast between the 
peaceful character of these first years at Concord and 
the increased sombreness of some of the visions there 
recorded. 

The reason of this is, that Hawthorne's genius had 
now waxed to a stature which made its emanations less 
immediately dependent on his actual mood. I am far 
* from assuming an exact autobiographical value for the 
"Twice-Told Tales" ; a theory which the writer himself 
condemned. But they, as he has also said, require "to 
be read in the clear brown twilight atmosphere in which 



TONE OF THE "MOSSES." 203 

they were written " ; while the " Mosses " are the work 
of a man who has learned to know the world, and the 
atmosphere in which they were composed seems almost 
dissonant with the tone of some of them. " The Birth- 
mark," " The Bosom Serpent," " Rappaccini's Daughter," 
and that terrible and lurid parable of " Young Goodman 
Brown," are made up of such horror as Hawthorne has 
seldom expressed elsewhere. " The Procession of Life " 
is a fainter vibration of the same chord of awfulness. Such 
concentration of frightful truth do these most graceful 
and exquisitely wrought creations contain, that the in- 
tensity becomes almost poisonous. What is the meaning 
of this added revelation of evil ? The genius of Haw- 
thorne was one which used without stint that costliest of 
all elements in production, — time; the brooding propen- 
sity was indispensable to him ; and, accordirgly, as some 
of these conceptions had occurred to him a good while 
before the carrying out, they received great and almost 
excessive elaboration. The reality of sin, the pervasive- 
ness of evil, had been but slightly insisted upon in the 
earlier tales : in this series, the idea bursts up like a 
long-buried fire, with earth-shaking strength, and the 
pits of Hell seem yawning beneath us. Dismal, too, 
is the story of "Roger Malvin's Burial," and dreary 
"The. Christmas Banquet," with its assembly of the 
supremely wretched. In " Earth's Holocaust " we get 
the first result of Hawthorne's insight into the demonian- 
ism of reformatory schemers who forget that the centre 
of every true reform is the heart. And, incidentally, this 
marks out the way to " The Scarlet Letter " on the one 
hand, and " The Blitliedale Romance " on the other, in 
which the same theme assumes two widely different 
phases. Thus we find the poet seeking more and more 
certainly the central fountain of moral suggestion from 



204< ALLEGORY AND SYMBOLISM. 

wliicli he drew his best inspirations. The least pleasing 
quality of the work is, I think, its overcharged allegorical 
burden. Some of the most perfect of all his tales are here, 
but their very perfection makes one recoil the more at the 
supremacy of their purely intellectual interest. One feels 
a certain chagrin, too, on finishing them, as if the com- 
pleteness of embodiment had given the central idea a 
shade of too great obviousness. Hawthorne is most en- 
joyable and most true to himself when he offers us the 
chalice of poetry filled to tlie very brim with the clear 
liquid of moral truth. But, at first, there seems to have 
been a conflict between his aesthetic and his ethical im^ 
pulse. Coleridge distinguishes the symbolical from tlie 
allegorical, by calling it a part of some Avhole which it 
represents. " Allegory cannot be other than spoken con- 
sciously ; whereas in the symbol it is very possible that the 
general truth represented may be working unconsciously 

in the writer's mind The advantage of symbolical 

writing over allegory is that it presumes no disjunction of 
faculties, but simple predominance." 'Nttw in the " Alle-^ 
gories of the Heart," collected in the "Mosses," there is \ 
sometimes an extreme consciousness of the idea to be illus- 
trated; and though the ideas are in a measure symbolical, 
yet they are on the whole too disintegrating in their effect 
to leave the artistic result quite generous aild satisfying. 
Allegory itself, as an echo of one's thought, is often 
agreeable, and pleases through surprise ; yet it is apt 
to be confusing, and smotliers the poetic harmony. In 
his romances, Hawthorne escapes into a liugely signifi- 
cant, symbolic sphere which relieves the reader of this 
partial vexation. "The Celestial Railroad," of course, 
must be excepted from censure, being the sober parody 
of a famous work, and in itself a masterly satirical 
allegory. And in two cases, "Drovvne's Wooden Im- 



PERFECTION OF FORM. 205 

age," and " The Artist of tlie Beautiful," we find the 
most perfect imaginable symbolism. In one, the story of 
Pygmalion compressed and Yankeefied, yet rendered ad- 
ditionally lovely by its homeliness ; and the essence of 
all artistic life, in the other, presented in a form that can- 
not be surpassed. "Mrs. Bullfrog" is a sketch which is 
ludicrously puzzling, until one recalls Hawtliorne's ex- 
planation : " The story was written as a mere experiment 
in that style ; it did not come from any depth within me, 
— neither my heart nor mind had anything to do with 
it." * It is valuable, in this light, as a distinct boundary- 
mark in one direction. But the essay vein which had pro- 
ducsd some of the clearest watered gems in the " Twice- 
Told Tales," begins in the " Mosses " to yield increase of 
brilliance and beauty ; and we here find, with the gath- 
ering strength of imagination, — the enlarged power for 
bringing the most unreal things quite into the circle of 
realities, — a compensating richness in describing the 
simply natural, as in " Buds and Bird Yoices," " Fire 
Worship," "The Old Apple-Dealer." 

Everything in these two volumes illustrates forcibly 
the brevity, the absolutely right proportion of language 
to idea, which from the first had marked Hawthorne with 
one trait, at least, quite unlike any displayed by the 
writers with whom lie was compared, and entirely foreign 
to the mood of the present century. This sense of form, 
the highest and last attribute of a creative writer, pro- 
vided it comes as the result of a deep necessity of his 
genius, and not as a mere acquirement of art, is a quality 
that has not been enough noticed in him ; doubtless be- 
cause it is not enough looked for anywhere by the major- 
ity of critics and readers, in these days of adulteration 

* American Note-Books, Vol. II. 



206 POE'S ATTACK. 

and of rapid manufacture out of shoddy and sliort-fibred 
stuffs. We demand a given measure of reading, good or 
bad, and producers of it are in great part paid for length : 
so that with much using of thin and shapeless literature, 
"we have forgotten how good is that which is solid and has 
form. But, having attained this perfection in the short 
story, Hawthorne thereafter abandoned it for a larger 
mould. 

The "Mosses," as T have said, gained him many ad- 
mirers. In them he for the first time touched somewhat 
upon the tendencies of the current epoch, and took an en- 
tirely independent stand among the philosophers of New 
England. Yet, for a while, there was the oddest miscon- 
ception of his attitude by those at a distance. A Wliig 
magazine, pleased by his manly and open conservatism, 
felt convinced that he must be a Whig, though he 
was, at the moment of the announcement, taking ofiice 
under a Democratic President. On the other hand, 
a writer in "The Cliurch Review" of New Haven, 
whom we shall presently see more of, was incited to a tilt 
against him as a rabid New England Iheorist, the outcome, 
of phalansteries, a subverter of marriage and of all other 
holy things. In like manner, while Hawthorne was cast- 
ing now and then a keen dart at the Transcendentalists, 
and falling asleep over "The Dial" (as his journals be- 
tray), Edgar Poe, a literary Ermaceus, wellnigh exhausted 
his supply of quills upon the author, as belonging to a 
scliool toward which he felt peculiar acerbity. " Let him 
mend his pen," cried Poe, in his most high-pitched strain 
of personal abuse, " get a bottle of visible ink, hang (if 
possible) the editor of ' The Dial,' cut Mr. Alcott, and 
throw out of the window to the pigs all liis odd numbers 
of the ' North American Review.' " This paper of Poe's 
is a laugliable and pathetic case of his professedly punc- 



INCONSISTENCIES OF POE. 207 

tllious analysis covering the most bitter attacks, witli 
traces of wliat looks like envy, and others of a resistless 
impulse to sympathize with a literary brother as against 
the average mind. He begins with a discussion of origi- 
nality and peculiarity : " In one sense, to be peculiar is 
to be original," he says, but the true originality is " not the 
uniform but the continuous peculiarity, .... giving its own 
hue to everything it touches," and touching everything. 
From this flimsy and very uncertain principle, wliicli 
seems to make two different things out of the same thing, 
lie goes on to conclude that, " the fact is, if Mr. Haw- 
thorne were really original, he could not fail of making 
himself felt by the public. But the fact is, he is not 
original in any sense." He then attempts to show that 
Hawthorne's peculiarity is derivative, and selects Tieck 
as the source of this idiosyncrasy. Perhaps his insinu- 
ation may be the origin of Hawtliorne's effort to read 
some of the German author, while at the Old Manse, — 
an attempt given up in great fatigue. Presently, the un- 
liappy critic brings up his favorite charge of plagiarism ; 
and it happens, as usual, that the writer borrowed from 
is Poe himself ! The similarity which he discovers is be- 
tween " Howe's Masquerade " and " William Wilson," 
and is based upon fancied resemblances of situation, 
which have not the least foundation in the facts, and upon 
the occurrence in both stories of the phrase, "Villain, 
unmuffle yourself!" In the latter half of his review, 
written a little later, Mr. Poe takes quite another tack : — 

" Of Mr. Hawthorne's tales we would say emphatically that 
they belong to the highest regioa of art, — an art subservient 
to genius of a very lofty order. We had supposed, with good 
reason for so supposing, that he had been thrust into his pres- 
ent position by one of the impudent cliques who beset our 



208 A PUZZLING ORIGINALITY. 

literature ; . . . . but we have been most agreeably mistalvcn. 
.... Mr. Hawthorne's distinctive trait is invention, crea- 
tion, imagination, originality, — a trait which, in the literature 
of fiction, is positively worth all the rest. But the nature of 

the originality .... is but imperfectly understood The 

inventive or original mind as frequently displays itself in novelty 
of tone as in novelty of matter. Mr. Hawthorne is original 
in all points." 

This, certainly, is making generous amends ; but be- 
fore he leaves the subject, the assertion is repeated, that 
" he is peculiar, and not original." 

Though an extravagant instance, this tourney of Poe's 
represents pretty well the want of understanding with 
which Hawthorne was still received by many readers. 
His point of view once seized upon, nothing could be 
more clear and simple than his own exposition of refined 
and evasive truths ; but the keen edge of his perception 
remained quite invisible to some. Of the " Twice-Told 
Tales " Hawthorne himself wrote : — 

" The sketches are not, it is hardly necessary to say, pro- 
found; but it is rather more remarkable that they so seldom, 
if ever, show any design on the writer's part to make them 

so Every sentence, so far as it embodies thought or 

sensibility, may be understood and felt by anybody who will 
give himself the trouble to read it, and will take up the book 
in a proper mood." 

But it w^as hard for people to find that mood, because 
in fact the Tales toere profound. Their language was 
clear as crystal ; but all the more dazzlingly shone through 
the crystal that new light of liawthorne's gaze. 

After nearly four years, Hawthorne's tenancy of the 
Manse came to an end, and he returned to Salem, with 
some prospect of an office there from the new Democratic 



PROSPECTS OF OFFICE. 209 

government of Polk. It is said tliat President Tyler had 
at one time actually appointed him to the Salem post- 
office, but was induced to withdraw his name. There 
were local factions that kept the matter in abeyance. 
The choice, in any case, lay between the Naval Office 
and the surveyorship, and Bridge urged Hawthorne's 
appointment to tlie latter. " Whichever it be," wrote 
Hawthorne, " it is to you that I shall owe it, among so 
many other solid kindnesses. I have as true friends as 
any man lias, but you have been the friend in need and 
the friend indeed." At this time he was seriously in want 
of some profitable employment, for he had received 
almost nothing from the magazine. It was the period of 
credit, and debts were hard to collect. His journal at 
the Old Manse refers to the same trouble. I have been 
told that, besides losing the value of many of his contri- 
butions to the " Democratic," through the failure of the 
magazine, he had advanced money to the publisliers, 
which was never repaid ; but this has not been corrobo- 
rated, and as he had lost nearly everything at Brook 
Parm, it is a little doubtful. At length, he was installed 
as surveyor in the Salem Custom-House, where he hoped 
soon to besrin writinsr at ease. 




N" 



VII. 



THE SCARLET LETTER. 



1846-1850. 




HE literary result of the four years which Haw- 
thorne now, after long absence, spent in his na- 
tive town, was the first romance which gave him 
world-wide fame. But the intention of beginning to write 
soon was not easy of fulfilment in the new surroundings. 

"Literature, its exertions and objects, were now of little 
moment in my regard," he says, in "The Custom-House." 
" I cared not at this period for books ; they were apart from 
me A gift, a faculty, if it had not departed, was sus- 
pended and inanimate within me." 

Readers of that charming sketch will remember the 
account of the author's finding a veritable Puritan scarlet 
letter in an unfinished upper room of the public building 
in which he labored at this time, and how he was urged 
by the ghost of a former surveyor, who had written an 
account of the badge and its wearer, to make the matter 
public. The discovery of these materials is narrated with 
such reassuring accuracy, that probably a large number of 
people still suppose this to have been the origin of " The 
Scarlet Letter." But there is no knowledge among 



LEUTZE'S STRANGE STORY. 211 

those immediately connected with Hawthorne of any act- 
ual relic having been found ; nor, of course, is it likely 
that anything besides the manuscript memorandum should 
Jiave been preserved. But 1 do not know that he saw 
even this. The papers of Mr. Pue were probably a pure 
invention of the author's. 

A strange coincidence came to light the year after 
the publication of the romance. A letter from Leutze, 
the painter, was printed in the Art Union Bulletin, run- 
ning thus : — 

" I was struck, when some years ago in the Schwarzwald 
(in an old castle), with one picture in the portrait-gallery ; it 
has haunted me ever since. It was not the beauty or finish 
Ihat charmed me ; it was something strange in the figures, the 
immense contrast between the child and what was supposed to 
be her gouveniante in the garb of some severe order ; the child, 
a girl, was said to be the ancestress of the family, a princess of 
some foreign land. No sooner had I read ' The Scarlet Letter ' 
than it bui-st clearly upon me that the picture could represent no 
one else than Hester Prynne and little Pearl. I hurried to see 
it again, and found my suppositions corroborated, for the for- 
merly inexplicable embroidery on the breast of the woman, which 
I supposed was the token of her order, assumed the form of the 
letter ; and though partially hidden by the locks of the girl and 
the flowers in her hair, I set to work upon it at once, and made 
as close a copy of it, with all its quaintness, as was possible to 
me, which I shall send you soon. How Hester Prynne ever 
came to be painted, I can't imagine ; it must certainly have 
been a freak of little Pearl. Strange enough, the castle is 
named Perlenburg, the Castle of Pearls, or Pearl Castle, as 
you please." 

A more extraordinary incident in its way than this dis- 
covery, if it be trustworthy, could hardly be conceived ; 
but I am not aware that it has been Verified. 



21^ GERMS OF "SCxiRLET LETTER." 

The germ of the story in Hawthorne's mind is given 
below. The name Pearl, it will be remembered, occurs 
in the Note-Books, as an original and isolated suggestion 
" for a girl, in a story." 

In "Endicott and the Red Cross," one of the twice- 
told series printed many years before, there is a descrip- 
tion of " a young woman, with no mean share of beauty, 
whose doom it was to wear the letter A on the breast of 
her gown, in the eyes of all the world and her own chil- 
dren. Sporting with her infamy, the lost and desperate 
creature had embroidered the fatal token in scarlet cloth, 
with golden thread and the nicest art of needlework." 
A friend asked Hawthorne if he had documentary evi- 
dence for this particular punishment, and he replied that 
he had actually seen it mentioned in the town records of 
Boston, though with no attendant details,* _ This friend 
said to another at the time : " We siiall hear of that letter 
again, for it evidently has made a profound impression 
on Hawthorne's mind." Returning to Salem, where liis 
historical stories and sketches had mainly been written, 
he reverted naturally to the old themes ; and this one 

* I may here transcribe, as a fm'ther authority, which. Haw- 
thorne may or may not have seen, one of the laws of Plymouth 
Colony, enacted in 1658, about the period in which the events 
of "The Scarlet Letter" are placed. "It is enacted by the 
Court and the Authoritie thereof that Avhosoeuer shall committ 
Adidtery shal bee seuerly Punished hy whipping two seueral 
times viz : once whiles the Court is in being att which they are 
convicted of the fact, and the second time as the Court shall 
order, and likewise to were two Capitall letters viz : A D cut 
out in Cloth and sewed on their vpennost gannents on their 
anne or backe ; and if at any time they shal bee taken without 
said letters, whiles they are in the Gou'ment soe worne, to be 
forthwith Taken and publicly whipt." 



FINISHING THE BOOK. 213 

doubtless took possession of him soon after his entrance 
on liis customs duties. But these disabled him from fol- 
lowing it out at once. When the indefatigable Whigs 
got hold of the government again, Hawthorne's literary 
faculty came into power also, for he was turned out of 
office. In the winter of 1849, therefore, he got to work 
on his first regular romance. In his Preface to the 
" Mosses " he had formally renounced the short story ; 
but " The Scarlet Letter " proved so highly wrought a 
tragedy that he had fears of its effect upon the public, if 
presented alone. 

" In. the present case I have some doubts about the expedi- 
ency, [he wrote to Mr. Fields, the junior partner of his new 
publisher, Ticknor,] because, if the book is made up entirely of 
' The Scarlet Letter,' it will be too sombre. I found it impos- 
sible to relieve the shadows of the story Avith so much light as 
I would gladly have thrown in. Keeping so close to its point 
as the tale does, and diversified no otherwise than by turning 
different sides of the same dark idea to the reader's eye, it will 
weary veiy many people, and disgust some. Is it safe, then, 
to stake the book entirely on this one chance ? " 

His plan was to add some of the pieces afterward 
printed with the "The Snow Image," and entitle the 
whole " Old Time Legends, together with Sketches Ex- 
perimental and Ideal." But this was abandoned. Ou 
the 4th of Eebruary, 1850, he writes to Bridore : — 

" I finished my book only yesterday : one end being in the 
press at Boston, while the other was in my head here at Sa- 
lem ; so that, as you see, the story is at least foui-teen miles 
long 

" My book, the publisher tells me, will not be out before 
April. He speaks of it in tremendous terms of approbation ; 
so does Mis. Hawthorne, to whom I read the conclusion last 




214 EAPID SALE. 

night.* It broke her heart, and sent her to bed with a griev- 
ous headache, — which I look upon as a triumphant success. 
Judging from its effect on her and the publisher, I may calcu- 
late on what bowlers calls a ' ten-strike.' But I do not make 
any such calculation." 

Now that the author had strongly taken hold of one of 
the most tangible and terrible of subjects, the public no 
longer held back. "The Scarlet Letter" met with in- 
stant acceptance, and the first edition of five thousand 
copies was exhausted in ten days. On the old ground of 
Salein and in the region of New England history where 
he had won his first triumphs, Hawtliorne, no longer the 
centre of a small public, received the applause of a wide- 
spread audience throughout this country, and speedily in 
Europe too. His old friend, " Tlie London Athenfieum," 
received " The Scarlet Letter " with very high, though 
careful praise. But at the same time with this new and 
wide recognition, an assault was made on the author 
whicli it is quite worth wliile to record here. This was 
an article in "The Church Review" (an Episcopal quar- 
terly published at New Haven), f written, I am told, by 
a then young man who has since reached a high place 
in the ecclesiastical body to which he belongs. The re- 

* This recalls an allusion in the English Note-Books (Sep- 
tember 14, 1855) : " Speaking of Thackeray, I cannot but 
w^onder at his coolness in respect to his own pathos, and com- 
pare it with my emotions when I read the last scene of The 
Scarlet Letter to my wife just after writing it, — tried to 
read it, rather, for my voice swelled and heaved, as if I were 
tossed uj) and down on an ocean as it subsides after a storm. 
But I was in a very nervous state, then, having gone through 
a great diversity of emotion w^hile writing it, for many 
months." 

f In the number for Januaiy, 1851. 



CHUUCH REVIEW ATTACK. 215 

viewer, in this case, had in a previous article discussed 
tlie question of literary schools in America, Speaking of 
the origin of the term "Lake School," he pronounced 
the epithet Lakers " the mere blunder of superficial wit 
and raillery." But that did not prevent him from creat- 
ing the absurd title of " Bay writers," which he applied 
to all the writers about Boston, baptizing them in the 
profane waters of Massachusetts Bay. " The Church Re- 
view" was in the habit of devoting a good deal of its 
attention to criticism of the Puritan movement which 
founded New England. Accordingly, " It is time," an- 
nounced tins logician, in opening his batteries on Haw- 
thorne, " that the literary world should learn that" 
Churchmen are, in a very large proportion, their readers 
and book-buyers, and that the tastes and principles of 
Churchmen have as good a right to be respected as those 
of Puritans and Socialists." Yet, inconsistently enough, 
he declared that Bay writers could not have grown to 
the stature of authors at all, unless they had first shaken 
off the Puritan religion, and adopted " a religion of indif- 
ference and unbelief." Thus, though attacking them as 
Puritans and Socialists (this phrase was aimed at Brook 
Farm), he denied that they were Puritans at all. 
Clear understanding of anything from a writer with so 
much of the boomerang in his mind was not to be ex- 
pected. But neither would one easily guess the revolt- 
ing vulgarity with which he w^as about to view " The 
Scarlet Letter." He could discover in it nothing but a 
deliberate attempt to attract readers by pandering to the 
basest taste. He imagines that Hawthorne " selects the 
intrigue of an adulterous minister, as the groundwork of 
his ideal " of Puritan times, and asks, " Is the French 
era actually begun in our literature ? " Yet, being in 
some points, or professing to be, an admirer of the 



216 A GRAVE MISTAKE. 

author, " We are glad," he says, " that ' The Scarlet 
Letter ' is, after all, little more than an experiment, and 
need not be regai'ded as a step necessarily fatal." And 
in order to save Mr. Hawthorne, and stem the tide of 
corruption, he is willing to point out his error. Never- 
theless, he is somewhat at a loss to know where to punc- 
ture the heart of the offence, for " there is a provoking 
concealment of the author's motive," he confesses, " from 
the beginning to the end of the story. We wonder what 
he would be at : whether he is making fun of all religion, 
or only giving a fair hint of the essential sensualism of 
enthusiasm. But, in short, we are astonished at the kind 
of incident he has selected for romance." The phraseol- 
ogy, he finds, is not offensive : but this is eminently dia- 
bolical, for " the romance never hints tlie shocking words 
that belong to its things, but, like Mephistopheles, hints 
that the arch-fiend himself is a very tolerable sort of 
person, if nobody would call him Mr. Devil." Where, 
within the covers of the book, could the deluded man 
have found tliis doctrine urged ? Only once, faintly, 
and then in the words of one of the chief sinners. 

" Shelley himself," says the austere critic, airing his litera- 
ture, " never imagined a more dissolute conversation than that 
in which the polluted minister comforts himself with the thought, 
that the revenge of the injured husband is worse than his own 
sin in instigating it. ' Thou and I never did so, Hester,' he 
suggests ; and she responds, ' Never, never ! What we did had 
a consecration of its own.' " 

And these wretched and distorted consolations of two 
erring and condemned souls, the righteous Churchman, 
with not very commendable taste, seizes upon as the moral 
of the book, leaving aside the terrible retribution which 
overtakes and blasts them so soon after their vain plan of 



HAWTHORXE'S REAL ATTITUDE. 217 

flight and happiness. Not for a moment does Hawthorne 
defend their excuses for themselves. Of Hester : — • 

" Shame, Despair, Solitude ! These [he says] had hccn her 
teachers, — stern and wild ones, — and they had made her 
strong, but taught her much amiss." 

And what she urges on behalf of herself and Dimmes- 
dale must, of course, by any pure-minded reader, be iu- 
cluded among the errors thus taken into her mind. 

" The minister, on the other hand, had never gone through 
an experience calculated to lead him beyond the scope of gener- 
ally received laws ; although, in a single instance, he had so 

fearfully transgressed one of the most sacred of them 

Were such a man once more to fall, what plea could be urged 
in extenuation of his crime ? None ; unless it avail him 
somewhat, that he was broken down by long and exquisite suf- 
fering ; that his mind was darkened and confused by the very 
remorse which harrowed it." 

But that these partial excuses are futile, the writer 
goes on to show, in this solemn declaration : — 

" And be the stern and sad truth spoken, that the breach 
which guilt has once made into the human soul is never, in 
this mortal state, repaired. It may be watched and guarded. 
.... But there is still the ruined wall, and near it the stealthy 
tread of the foe that would win over again his unforgotten tri- 
umph." 

How Mr, Dimmesdale yielded to this stealthy foe is 
then described ; but it is also shown how E-oger Chil- 
lingworth, the personified retribution of the two sinners, 
fastens himself to them in all their movements, and will 
be with them in any flight, however distant. 



218 POUNDATION OF THE TRAGEDY. 

" ' Had^t thou sougM the whole earth over,' said he, look- 
ing darkly at the clergyman, ' there was no one 2)lace so secret, 
no high place nor lowly place, where thou couldst have escaped 
me. 

And it was precisely because Hawthorne would leave 
no specious turn of the hypocrisy of sin unrevealed, that 
he carried us through this delusive mutual consolation of 
the guilty pair, and showed us tlieir empty hope, founded 
on wrong-doing, powdered to dust at the moment of ful- 
filment. 

But the reverend critic, by some dark and prurient 
affinity of his imagination, saw nothing of the awful 
truths so clearly though briefly expressed, and finally 
came to the conclusion that tlie moral of the whole fic- 
tion was " that the Gospel has not set the relations of 
man and woman where they should be, and that a new 
gospel is needed to supersede the Seventh Command- 
ment, and the bond of matrimony." 

"The lady's frailty, [writes the reviewer,] is philosophized 
into a natural and necessary result of the Scriptural law of 
marriage, which by holding her irrevocably to her vows, as 
plighted to a dried-up old book-worm, .... is viewed as mak- 
ing her heart an easy victim The sin of her seducer, too, 

seems to be considered as lyingj not so much in the deed itself, 
as in his long concealment of it ; and in fact the whole moral 
of the tale is given in the words, ' Be true, be true ! ' as if sin- 
cerity in sin were a virtue, and as if ' Be clean, be clean ! ' 
were not the more fitting conclusion." 

But this moral of cleanliness was one so obvious 
that Hawthorne probably never dreamed of any one's 
requiring it to be emphasized. In fact, it is the start- 
ing-point, tiie very foundation, of the tragedy. Tlie 
tale is a massive argument for repentance, which is the 



PURITAN DISCIPLINE. 219 

flinging aside of concealment, and the open and trutliful 
acknowledgment of sin. In tlie Puritan mode of deal- 
ing with sin, Hawthorne found the whole problem of 
repentance and confession presented in the most drastic, 
concentrated, and startling form ; for the Puritans car- 
ried out in the severest style a practical illustration 
of the consequences of moral offence. Since men and 
"women would not voluntarily continue in active remorse 
and public admission of wrong-doing, these governors 
and priests determined to try the effect of visible sym- 
bols in keeping the conscience alive. People were set 
before the public gaze, in the stocks, whipped in public 
at the whipping-post, and imprisoned in the pillory. 
Malefactors had their ears cropped ; scolding women 
had to wear a forked twig on the tongue ; other crim- 
inals to carry a halter constantly around the neck. 
But that this was only a hellish device, after all ; that . 
the inflictors of sucli punishment were arrogating too' 
much to themselves, and shared the office of the fiend ; '' 
that, moreover, this compulsion of a dumb outward 
truthfulness would never build up the real inner truth • 
of the soul ; — all this Hawthorne perceived and en- • 
deavored to portray in a form which should be as a para- ' 
ble, applying its morality to the men and women of . 
to-day, all the more persuasively because of its indirect- 
ness. As a study of a system of social discipline never 
before so expounded, it claimed the deepest attention. / 
And never was the capacity of sinning men and women -^ 
for self-delusion more wonderfully illustrated than in this 
romance. The only avenue of escape from such delusion 
was shown to be self-analysis ; that is, the conscientious 
view of one's self which keeps the right or wrong of 
one's conduct always clearly visible. Hester was on 
the whole the truest of the three persons in the drama, 



220 UEPENTANCE AND RETRIBUTION. 

and the advantages of this comparative trueness are 
constantly made manifest. She in a measure conquers 
evil and partly atones for her wrong, by the good which 
slie is able to do among her fellow-beings, — as much 
compensation as can rightfully be hoped for a woman 
who has once been so essentially corrupted as she. 
Dimmesdale, too, retains so much of native truth that 
lie never allows his conscience to slumber for a mo- 
ment, and plies the scourge of remorse upon himself 
continually. To this extent he is better than Chilling- 
worth, who, in order to take into his own hands the 
retribution that belongs to Heaven, deliberately adopts 
falsity for his guide, and becomes a monster of deceit, 
taking a wicked joy in that whicli ought to have awak- 
ened an endless, piteous horror in iiim instead, and 
have led to new contemplation and study of virtue. But 
[Dimmesdale, though not coolly and maliciously false, 
stops short of open confession, and in this submits him- 
self to the most occult and corrosive influence of his 
own sin. For him, the single righteousness possible con- 
sisted in abject acknowledgment, Ouce announcing that 
he had fallen, and was unworthy, he might have taken 
his place on the lower moral plane ; and, equally resign- 
ing the hope of public honor and of happiness with Hes- 
ter, he could have lent his crippled energies to the doing 
of some limited good. The shock to the general belief 
in probity would have been great ; but the discovery that 
the worst had been made known, that the minister was 
strong enough to condemn himself, and descend from the 
place he no longer was fit for, would have restored the 
public mind again, by showing it that a deeper probity 
is possible than that which it wanted to see sustained. 
I This is the lesson of the tragedy, that nothhig is so de- 
structive as the morality of mere appearances. Not that 



THE SOCIAL ASPECT. 221 

sincerity in sin is a virtue, but tliat it is better tlian sin 
and falsehood combined. And if anything were wanting, 
at first, to make this clear, there certainly is not a par- 
ticle of obscurity left by the glare of the catastrophe, 
Avhen the clergyman rejects Hester's hope that lie and 
she may meet after death, and spend their immortal life 
together, and says that God lias proved his mercy most 
of all by the afflictions he has laid upon him. 

As to the new truth which Hester hoped would be 
revealed, it could have been no other than that ultimate 
lifting up of the race into a plane of the utmost human 
truthfulness, which every one who believes in the working 
of all things for good, looks forward to with vague long- 
ing, but with most certain faith. How far the Puritan 
organization was from this state of applied truth, the ro- 
mance shows. Nearly every note in the range of Puritan 
sympathies is touched by the poet, as he goes on. The 
still unspoiled tenderness of the young matron who can- 
not but feel something of mercifulness toward Hester is 
overruled by the harsh exultation of other women in her 
open shame. We have the noble and spotless character 
of Winthrop dimly suggested by the mention of his death 
on the night of Dimmesdale's vigil at the pillory; but 
much more distinct appears the mild and saintly Wilson, 
who, nevertheless, is utterly incompetent to deal with the 
problem of a woman's lost morality. Governor Belling- 
ham is the stern, unflinching, manly upholder of the state 
and its ferocious sanctions ; yet in the very house with 
him dwells Mistress Hibbins, the witch-lady, revelling in 
the secret knowledge of widespread sin. Thus we are 
led to a fuller comprehension of Chillingworth's attitude 
as an exponent of the whole Puritan idea of spiritual gov- 
ernment ; and in his diabolical absorption and gloating 
interest in sin, we behold an exaggerated — but logically 



222 . NOVEL AND DRAMA. 

exaggerated — spectre of the Puritan attempt to precipi- 
tate and personally supervise the punishments of eternity 
on this side of death. 

Dr. George B. Loring, of Salem, wrote at the time an 
excellent reply to this article in "The Church Review," 
though he recognized, as all readers of general intelli- 
gence must, that the author of it did not by any means 
represent the real enlighteument of the clergy and laity 
for whom he undertook to be a mouthpiece. 

Considered as a w^ork of art, " The Scarlet Letter " is 
perhaps not so excellent as the author's subsequent 
books. It may not unjustly be called a novel without a 
plot, so far as this touches the adroit succession of inci- 
dents and the interdependence of parts, which we call 
" plot." Passion and motive and character, having been 
brought together in given relations, begin ,to work to- 
ward a logical issue ; but the individual chapters stand 
before us rather as isolated pictures, wdth intervals be- 
tween, than as the closely conjoined links of a drama 
gathering momentum as it grows. There is succession 
and acceleration, indeed, in the movement of the story, 
but this is not quite so evident as is the hand which 
checks each portion and holds it perfectly still, long 
enougli to describe it completely. The author does not, 
like a playwright, reflect the action swiftly while it 
passes, but rather arrests it and studies it, then lets it go 
by. It may be that this is simply the distinction be- 
tween the dramatist's and the novelist's method; but 
probably we must allow it to be something more than 
that, and must attribute it to the pecjiliar leisure which 
qualifies all Hawthorne's fictions, at times enhancing their 
effect, but also protracting the impression a little too 
much, at times. Yet the general conception, and the 
mode of drawing out the story and of illustrating the 



ADVANTAGES OF HAUSHXESS. 233 

characters, is dramatic in a high degree. The author's 
exegesis of the moods of his persons is brief, suggestive, 
restrained; and, notwithstanding the weight of moral 
meaning which the whole work carries, it is impossible to 
determine how much the movement of events is affected 
by his own will, or by that imperious perception of the 
necessary outcome of certain passions and temperaments, 
which influences novelists of the higher order. 

As a demonstration of power, it seems to me that this i 
first extended romance was not outdone by its succes- 1 
sors ; yet there is a harshness in its tone, a want of miti-/ 
gation, vrhich causes it to strike crudely on the aisthetic^ 
sense by comparison with those mellower productions.} 
This was no doubt fortunate for its immediate success. 
Hawthorne's faith in pure beauty was so absolute as to 
erect at first a barrier between himself and the less de- 
vout reading pubUc. If in his earlier tales he had not so 
transfused tragedy with the suave repleteness of his sense 
of beauty, he might have snatched a speedier popular 
recognition. It is curious to speculate what might have 
been the result, had he written " The House of the Seven 
Gables " before " The Scarlet Letter." Deep as is the 
tragic element in the former, it seems quite likely that its 
greater gentleness of incident and happier tone would 
have kept the world from discovering the writer's real 
measure, for a while longer. But " The Scarlet Letter" 
burst with such force close to its ears, that the indolent 
public awoke in good earnest, and never forgot, though it 
speedily forgave the shock. 

There was another smaller but attendant explosion. 
Hawthorne's prefatory chapter on the Custom-Houss 
incensed some of his fellow-citlzans of Salem, terribly. 
There seems to have been a general civic clamor against 
him, on account of it, though it would be hard to find 



224 "CUSTOM-HOUSE" EXCITEMENT. 

any rational justification therefor. In reference to the 
affair, Hawthorne wrote at tiie time : — 

" As to the Salem people, I really thought I had heen ex- 
ceedingly good-natured in my treatment of them. They cer- 
tainly do not deserve good usage at my hands, after permitting 
me .... to he deliberately lied down, not merely once, but 
at two separate attacks, and on two false indictments, without 
hardly a voice being raised on my behalf." 

This refers to political machinations of the party opposed 
to Hawthorne as an official : tliey had pledged themselves, 
it was understood, not to ask for his ejection, and after- 
ward set to work to oust him without cause. There is 
reason to believe that Hawthorne felt acute exasperation 
at these unpleasant episodes for a time. But the annoy- 
ance came upon him when he was worn out with the ex- 
citement of composing "The Scarlet Letter"; and this 
ebullition of local hostility must moreover have been 
especially offensive at a moment when the public every- 
where else was receiving him with acclaim as a person 
wliose genius entitled him to enthusiastic recognition. 
Hawthorne had generous admirers and sincere friends in 
Salem, and his feeling was, I suppose, in great measure 
the culmination of that smouldering disagreement which 
had harassed him in earlier years, and had lurked in his 
heart in spile of the constant mild affection which he 
maintained toward the town. 

But the connection between Hawthorne and Salem was 
now to be finally broken off. He longed for change, for 
the country, and for the recreation that the Old Manse 
garden had given him. " I should not long stand such 
a life of bodily inactivity and mental exertion as I liave 
led for the last few months," he wrote to Bridge. " Here 
I hardly go out once a week." On this account, and 



PORTSMOUTH PROJECT. 225 

because of his difficulty in writing while in office, he did 
not so much regret losing his place. One of the plans 
proposed at this time was that he should rent or buy the 
Sparhawk house, a famous old colonial mansion on Goose 
Creek, at Kittery, in Maine, which was then to be dis- 
posed of in some way. Hawthorne, I think, would have 
found much that was suggestive and agreeable in the 
neighborhood. After his return from abroad, he made 
a visit to the quaint and stately little city of Porls- 
mouth, and dined at one of the most beautiful old houses 
in New England, the ancient residence of Governor Lang- 
don, then occupied by the Rev. Dr. Burroughs. A me- 
morial of that visit remains, in this bright note from his 
host : — 

Portsmouth, Septemher, 1860. 
Mk. Hawthorne. 

My dear Sir : — There are no Mosses on our " Old 
Manse," there is no Romance at om Blithedale ; and this is no 
" Scarlet Letter." But you can give us a " Twice-Told Tale," 
if you will for the second time be our guest to-morrow at din- 
ner, at half past two o'clock. 

Very truly yours, 

Charles Burroughs. 

But, at present, Hawthorne's decision led him to 
Berkshire. 




10* 



VIII. 



LENOX AND CONCORD: PRODUCTIVE PERIOD. 



1850-1853. 




N the early summer, after the publication of 
" The Scarlet Letter," Hawthorne removed 
U from Salem to Lenox, in Berkshire, where him- 
self and his family were ensconced in a small red house 
near the Stockbridge Bowl, It was far from a comfortable 
residence ; but he had no means of obtaining a better one. 
Meantime, he could do what he was sent into the world 
to do, so long as he had the mere wherewithal to live. 

He was much interested in Herman Melville, at this 
time living in Pittsfield. There was even talk of their 
writing something together, as I judge from some cor- 
respondence; though tliis was abandoned. 

Between this summer of 1850 and June, 1853, Haw- 
thorne wrote " The House of the Seven Gables," " Tlie 
Blithedale Romance," "The Wonder-Book for Boys and 
Girls," and " Tauglewood Tales," besides the story of 
" The Snow Image " in the volume to which this supplies 
the title ; and his sliort " Life of Franklin Pierce." The 
previous paucity of encouragements to literature, and 
the deterring effect of official duties and of the Brook 
Farm attempt, were now removed, and his pen showed 
that it could pour a full current if only left free to do so. 



THE '^'^ SEVEN GABLES." 227 

The industry and energy of tliis period are tlie niore 
remarkable because he could seldom accomplish anything 
in the way of composition during the warm months. 
" The House of the Seven Gables " was under way by 
September, 1850. 

" I sha' n't have the new story ready," he writes to his pub- 
lisher on the 1st of October, " by November, for I am never 
good for anything in the literary way till after the first autum- 
nal frost, which has somewhat such an effect on my imagina- 
tion that it does on the foliage here about me, — multiplying 
and brightening its hues ; though they are likely to be sober 
and shabby enough after all." 

The strain of reflection upon the work in hand which 
he indulged one month later is so important as to merit 
dwelling upon. 

" I write diligently, but not so rapidly as I had hoped. 
I find the book requires more care and thought than ' The 
Scarlet Letter ' ; also I have to wait oftener for a mood. 
* The Scarlet Letter ' being all in one tone, I had only to get 
my pitch, and could then go on interminably. Many passages 
of this book ought to be finished with the minuteness of a 
Dutch picture, in order to give them their proper effect. 
Sometimes, when tired of it, it strikes me that the whole is 
an absurdity, from beginning to end ; but the fact is, in writ- 
ing a romance, a man is always, or always ought to be, 
careering on the utmost verge of a precipitous absurdity, and 
the skill lies in coming as close as possible, without actually 
tumbling over. My prevailing idea is, that the book ought 
to succeed better than 'The Scarlet Letter,' though I have no 
idea that it will." 

By the 12th of January, 1851, he was able to write : 
" My ' House of the Seven Gables ' is, so to speak. 



238 ITS SUCCESS. 

finished ; only I am liammering away a little at the 
roof, and doing up a few odd jobs that were left in- 
complete " ; and at the end of that month, he despatched 
the manuscript to Boston, still retaining his preference 
for it over the preceding work. 

" It has met with extraordinary success from that portion of 
the public to whose judgment it has been submitted, viz. from 
my wife. I likewise prefer it to * The Scarlet Letter ' ; but 
an author's opinion of -his book just after completing it is 
worth little or nothing, he being then in the hot or cold fit of 
a fever, and certain to rate it too high or too low. 

" It has undoubtedly one disadvantage, in being brought so 
close to the present time ; whereby its romantic improbabilities 
become more glaring." 

He also wrote to Bridge, in July, after listening to the 
critics, and giving his own opinion time to mature : — 

" I think it a work more characteristic of my mind, and 
more proper and natural for me to write, than ' The Scarlet 
Letter,' — but, for that very reason, less likely to interest the 
public. Nevertheless, it appears to have sold better than the 
former, and I think is more sure of retaining the ground that 
it acquires. Mrs. Kemble writes that both works are popular 
in England, and advises me to take out my copyright thei-e." 

His opinion of the superiority of the fresh production 
to his first great romance is no doubt one that critics will 
coincide with as regards artistic completeness ; though 
his fear that it would not succeed so well was not con- 
firmed, because, as I have suggested, he had begun to 
acquire that momentum of public favor which sets in 
after its first immense inertia has once been overcome. 
Acting on the reports from England, he made a sug- 
gestion to his publisher; and tliough this at first met 



LETTER FROM MISS MITFORD. 229 

"wiili discouragement, ten months later £200 -o^ere re- 
ceived from a London iiouse for " The Blithedale Eo- 
mance." English editions of his works had already 
become numerous. But Hawthorne began now to re- 
ceive a more ethereal and not less welcome kind of 
tribute from abroad, that of praise from the makers and 
markers of literature. The critics welcomed him to a 
high place; authors wrote to him, urging him to cross 
the sea; and Miss MitFord — of whom he said, "Her 
sketches, long ago as I read them, are as sweet in my 
memory as the scent of new hay " — sent special mes- 
sages expressive of her pleasure. 

When the " Blithedale Romance " had come out, Mr. 
Hawthorne sent Miss Mitford a copy, and she wrote in 
reply this cordial and delightful note : — 

SwALLOWFiELD, August 6, 1852. 

At the risk of troubling you, dear Mr. Hawthorne, I write 
again to tell you how much I thank you for the precious vol- 
ume enriched by your handwriting, wliich, for its own sake 
and for yours, I shall treasm-e carefully so long as I live. The 
story has your mark upon it, — the fine tragic construction un- 
matched amongst living authors, the passion of the concluding 
scenes, the subtle analysis of jealousy, the exquisite finish of 
style. I must tell you what one of the cleverest men whom I 
have ever known, an Irish barrister, the juvenile correspondent 
of Miss Edgeworth, says of your style : " His Enghsh is the 
richest and most intense essence of the language I know of ; 
his w^ords conveying not only a meaning, but more than they 
appear to mean. They point onward or upward or downward, 
as the case may be, and we cannot help following them with 
the eyes of imagination, sometimes smiUng, sometimes weep- 
ing, sometimes shuddering, as if we were victims of the mes- 
meric influence he is so fond of bringing to bear upon his 
characters. Three of the most perfect Englishmen of our day 



230 MISS MITFORD. 

are Americans, — Irving, Prescott, and this great new writer, 
Mr. Hawthorne." So far my friend Mr. Hockey. I forget, 
dear Mr. Hawthorne, whether I told you that the writer of 
whose works you remind me, not by imitation, but by resem- 
blance, is the great I'rench novelist, Balzac. Do you know his 
books 1 He is untranslated and untranslatable, and it requires 
the greatest familiarity with French literature to relish him 

thoroughly I doubt if he be much known amongst you ; 

at least I have never seen him alluded to in American litera- 
ture. He has, of course, the low morality of a Frenchman, 
but, being what he is, Mrs, Browning and I used to discuss 
his personages like living people, and regarded his death as a 
great personal calamity to both. 

I am expecting Mrs. Browning here in a few days, not being 

well enough to meet her in London How 1 wish, dear 

Mr. Hawthorne, that you were here to meet them ! The day 
w^ill come, I hope. It would be good for your books to look at 
Europe, and all of Europe that knows our tongue would rejoice 
to look at you. 

Ever your obliged and affectionate friend, 

M. R. MiTFOED. 

I must transcribe here, too, part of a letter from Her- 
man Melville, who, in the midst of his epistle, suddenly 
assumes the tone of a reviewer, and discourses as follows, 
under the heading, " T/ie House of the Seven Gables : A 
Romance. By Nathaniel Hawthorne. \Qmo. jyp. 344." 

" The contents of this book do not belie its clustering ro- 
mantic title. With great enjoyment we spent almost an hour 
in each separate gable. This book is like a fine old chamber, 
abundantly but still judiciously furnished with precisely that 
sort of furniture best fitted to furnish it. There are rich hang- 
ings, whereon are braided scenes from tragedies. There is old 
china with rare devices, set about on the carved beaufet ; there 
are long and indolent lounges to throw yourself upon ; there is 



HERMAN MELVILLE. 231 

an admirable sideboard, plentifully stored with good viands ; 
there is a smell of old wine in the pantry ; and finally, in one 
corner, there is a dark little black-letter volume in golden 
clasps, entitled Hawthorne : A Problem 

"We think the book for pleasantness of running interest 
surpasses the other work of the author. The curtains are now 
drawn ; the sun comes in more ; genialities peep out more. 
Were we to particularize what has most struck us in the 
deeper passages, we should point out the scene where Clifford, 
for a minute, would fain throw himself from the window, to 
join the procession ; or the scene where the Judge is left seated 
in his ancestral chair. 

" Clifford is full of an awful truth throughout. He is con- 
ceived in the finest, truest spirit. He is no caricature. He is 
Clifford. And here we would say, that did the circumstances 
permit, we should like nothing better than to devote an elabo- 
rate and careful paper to the full consideration and analysis of 
the purpose and significance of what so strongly characterizes 
all of this author's writing. There is a certain tragic phase of 
humanity, which, in our opinion, was never more powerfully 
embodied than by Hawthorne : we mean the tragicalness of 
human thought in its own unbiased, native, and profound work- 
ings. We think that into no recorded mind has the intense 
feeling of the whole truth ever entered more deeply than into 
this man's. By whole truth, we mean the apprehension of 
the absolute condition of present things as they strike the eye 
of the man who fears them not, though they do their worst to 
him." 

This really profound analysis, Mr. Mellville professes 
to extract from the " Pittsfield Secret Review," of which 
I wish further numbers could be found. 

But chief among the prizes of this season were letters 
from his friends Lowell and Holmes. The latter's I in- 
sert, because it admirably illustrates the cordial relation 
which has always distinguished the famous writers of 



232 LETTER FRO.M HOLMES. 

New England, — no pleasant illusion of distance, but a 
notable and praiseworthy reality. 

Boston, April 9, 1851. 

My deak Sir : — I have been confined to my chamber and 
almost to my bed, for some days since I received yonr note ; 
and in the mean time I have received what was even more wel- 
come, the new Romance " from the Author." While I was 
too ill to read, my wife read it to me, so that you have been 
playing physician to my heartaches and headaches at once, with 
the magnetism of your imagination. 

I think we have no romancer but yourself, nor have had any 
for this long time. I had become so set in this feeling, that 
but for your last two stories I should have given up hoping, 
and believed that all we were to look for in the way of sponta- 
neous growth were such languid, lifeless, sexless creations as in 
the view of certain people constitute the chief triumphs of a 
sister art as manifested among us. 

But there is rich red blood in Hester, and the flavor of the 
sweet-fern and the bayberry are not truer to the soil than the 
native sweetness of our little Phoebe ! The Yankee mind has 
for the most part budded and flowered in pots of English earth, 
but you have fairly raised yours as a seedling in the natural 
soil. My criticism has to stop here ; the moment a fresh mind 
takes in the elements of the common life about us and trans- 
figures them, I am contented to enjoy and admire, and let others 
analyze. Otherwise I should be tempted to display my appre- 
ciating sagacity in pointing out a hundred touches, transcrip- 
tions of nature, of character, of sentiment, true as the daguerreo- 
type, free as crayon sketching, which arrested me even in the 
midst of the palpitating story. Only one word, then, this : 
that the solid reality and homely truthfulness of the actual 
and present part of the story are blended with its weird and 
ghostly shadows with consummate skill and efffect ; this was 
perhaps the special difficulty of the story. 

I don't want to refuse anything you ask me to do. I shall 



LETTER FROM HOLMES. 233 

come up, I trust, about the 1st of June. I would look over the 
MS. in question, as a duty, Avith as much pleasure as many 
other duties afford. To say the truth, I have as great a dread 
of the Homo Caudatus Linn., Anglice, the Being with a Tale, 
male or female, as any can have. 

" If foes they write, if friends they read me dead," 

said poor Hepzibah's old exploded poet. Still, if it must be, I 
will stipulate to read a quantity not exceeding fifty-six pounds 
avoirdupois by weight or eighteen reams by measure or " tale," 
— provided there is no locomotion in the case. The idea of 
visiting Albany does not enter into my intentions. I do not 
know who would serve as a third or a second member of the 
committee ; Miss Sedgwick, if tlie Salic law does not prevail in 
Berkshire, is the most natural person to do it. But the real 
truth is, the little Albaneses want to see the author of " The 
Scarlet Letter," and don't care a sixpence who else is on the 
committee. That is what they are up. to. So if you want two 
dummies, on the classical condition not to leave the country 
except in case of invasion, absentees, voters by proxy, potential 
but not personally present bottle-holders, I will add my name 
to those of Latimer, Tlidlej'^, and Co. as a Martyr in the cause 
of Human Progress. 

Believe me, my dear sir, 

Yours very sincerely, 

O. W. Holmes. 

Hawthorne's interest in Dr. Holmes's works was 
also very great, and one of the last books which he read 
at all was " Elsie Yenuer," which he had taken np for a 
second time shortly before his death. 

Amid all the variety of thoughtful and thoughtless 
praise, or of other comment on the new romance, he 
began to feel that necessity for abstracting his attention 
entirely from what was said of his work in current publi- 
cations, which forces itself upon every creative mind at- 



234 A TROUBLESOME COINCIDENCE. 

tempting to secure some centre of repose in a chattering 
and unprivate age like the present. This feeling he im- 
parted to Bridge, and it also appears in one or two pub- 
lished letters. At the same time, it must be remembered 
how careful a consideration he gave to criticism ; and he 
wrote of Edwin Whipple's reviewing of the " Seven 
Gables " : — 

" Whipple's notices have done more than pleased me, for 
they have helped me to see my book. Much of the censure I 
recognize as just ; I wish I could feel the praise to be so fully 
deserved. Being better (which I insist it is) than ' The Scar- 
let Letter,' 1 have never expected it to be so popular." 

In this same letter occurs the following : — 

" , Esq., of Boston, has written to me, complain- 
ing that I have made his grandfather infamous ! It seems 
there was actually a Pyncheou (or Pynchon, as he spells it) 
family resident in Salem, and that their representative, at the 
])eriod of the Revolution, was a certain Judge Pynchon, a 

Tory and a refugee. This was Mr. 's grandfathei-, and (at 

least, so he dutifully describes him) the most exemplary old 
gentleman in the world. There are several touches in my ac- 
count of the Pyncheons which, he says, make it probable that 
I had this actual family in my eye, and he considers himself 
iufiuitely wronged and aggrieved, and thinks it monstrous that 
the 'virtuous dead' cannot be suffered to rest quietly in their 
graves." 

The matter here alluded to threatened to give Haw- 
thorne almost as much inconvenience as the tribulation 
which followed the appearance of " The Custom-House." 
One of the complainants in this case, though objecting to 
the use of the name Pyncheon, " respectfully suggests," 
with an ill-timed passion for accuracy, that it should in 



COMPLETENESS OF THE BOOK. 235 

future editions be printed with the e left out, because 
this was the proper mode in use by the family. 

There has been some slight controversy as to the origi- 
nal of the visionary mansion described in this romance. 
Mr. Hawthorne himself said distmctly that he had no 
})articular house in mind, and it is also a fact that none is 
recalled which fulfils all the conditions of that of the 
" Seven Gables." Nevertheless, one party has main- 
tained that the old Philip English house, pulled down 
many years since, was the veritable model ; and others 
support the Ingersoll house, which still stands. The 
Curwin, called the "Witch House," appears, by an 
antique painting from which photographs have been 
made, to have had the requisite number of peaks at a 
remote date ; but one side of the structure being per- 
force left out of the picture, there is room for a doubt.* 

In " The House of the Seven Gables " Hawthorne 
attained a connection of parts and a masterly gradation of 
tones which did not belong, in the same fulness, to "The 
Scarlet Letter;" There is, besides, a larger range of 
character, in this second work, and a much more nicely 
detailed and reticulated portrayal of the individuals. 
Hepzibah is a painting on ivory, yet with all the warmth 
of a real being. Very noticeable is the delicate veneration 
and tenderness for her with which the author seems to 
inspire us, notwithstanding the fact that he has almost 
nothing definite to say of her except what tends to throw 
a light ridicule. She is continually contrasted with the 
exquisite freshness, ready grace, and beauty of Phoebe, 
and subjected to unfavorable comparisons in the mind 
of Clifford, whose half-obliterated but still exact aesthetic 

* It is from one of these photographs that the cut in the new 
edition of Hawthoiue's Works has been developed. 



236 THE JUDGE AND HOLGRAVE. 

perception casts silent reproach upon lier. Yet, in spite 
of tliis, she becomes in a measure endeared to ,us. In 
the grace, and agreeableness too, with wliich Hawthorne 
manages to surround this ungifted spinster, we find a 
unit of measure for tlie beauty with wliich he has in- 
vested the more frightful and tragic elements of the 
story. It is this triumph of beauty without destroying 
the unbeautiful, that gives the romance its peculiar artis- 
tic virtue. Judge Pyncheon is an almost unqualified 
discomfort to the reader, yet he is entirely held within 
bounds by the prevailing charm of the author's style, and 
by the ingenious manner in which the pleasanter elements 
of the other characters are applied. At times the strong 
emphasis given to his evil nature makes one suspect tliat 
the villain is too deeply dyed ; but the question of equity 
here involved is one of the most intricate with which 
novelists have to deal at all. The well-defined opposition 
between good and bad forces has always been a necessity 
to man, in myths, religions, and drama. Heal life fur- 
nishes the most absolute extremes of possession by the 
angel or the fiend ; and Shakespere has not scrupled 
to use one of these ultimate possibilities in the person 
of lago. Yet Hawthorne was too acutely conscious of 
the downward bent in every heart, to let the Judge's 
pronounced iniquity stand without giving a glimpse of 
incipient evil in another quarter. This occurs in the 
temptation which besets Holgrave, when he finds that he 
possesses the same mesmeric sway over Phoebe, the 
latest Pyncheon offshoot, as that which his ancestor 
Matthew Maule exercised over Alice Pyncheon. The 
momentary mood which brings before him the absolute 
power which might be his over this fair girl, opens a 
whole new vista of wrong, in which the retribution would 
have been transferred from the shoulders of the Pyn- 



ARTISTIC MOTIVES. 237 

clieons to those of the Maules. Had Holgrave yielded 
then, he might liave damned liis own posterity, as Colonel 
Pyncheon had his. Thus, even in the hero of the piece, 
we are made aware of possibilities as malicious and de- 
structive as those hereditary faults grown to such rank 
maturity in the Judge ; and this may be said to offer a 
middle ground between the side of justice and attractive- 
ness, and the side of injustice and repulsiveness, on which 
the personages are respectively ranged. 

The conception of a misdeed operating through several 
generations, and righted at last solely by the over-top- 
pling of unrestrained malevolence on the one hand, and 
on the other by the force of upright character in the 
wronged family, was a novel one at the time ; this graphic 
depicture of the past at work upon the present has an- 
ticipated a great deal of the history and criticism of the 
following twenty -five years, in its close conjunction of 
antecedent influences and cumulative effects. 

As a discovery of native sources of picturesque fiction, 
this second romance was not less remarkable than the one 
which preceded it. The theme furnished by the imagi- 
nary Pyncheon family ranges from the tragic in the 
Judge, through the picturesquely pathetic in Cliff'ord, to 
a grotesque cast of pathos and humor in Hepzibah. 
Thence we are led to another vein of simple, fun-breed- 
ing characterization in Uncle Venner and Ned Higgins. 
The exquisite perception which draws old Uncle Venner 
in such wholesome colors, tones him up to just one de- 
gree of sunniness above the dubious light in which Hep- 
zibah stands, so that he may soften the contrast of broad 
humor presented by little Ned Higgins, the " First Cus- 
tomer." I cannot but regret that Hawthorne did not 
give freer scope to his delicious faculty for the humorous, 
exemplified in the " Seven Gables." If he had let his 



238 QUESTIONABLE POINTS. 

genius career as forcibly in this direction as it does in 
another, when burdened with the black weight of the 
dead Judge Pjncheon, he might have secured as wide 
an acceptance for the book as Dickens, with so much 
more melodrama and so much less art, could gain for 
less perfect works. Hawthorne's concentration upon the 
tragic element, and comparative neglect of the other, was 
in one sense an advantage; but if in the case under 
discussion he had given more bulk and saliency to the 
humorous quality, he might also have been more likely to 
avoid a fault which creeps in, immediately after that mar- 
vellous chapter chanted like an unholy requiem over the 
lifeless Judge. This is the sudden culmination of the 
passion of Holgrave for Phoebe, just at the moment when 
he has admitted her to the house where Death and him- 
self were keeping vigil. The revulsion, here, is too vio- 
lent, and seems to throw a dank and deathly exhalation 
into the midst of the sweetness which the mutual disclos- 
ure of love should have spread around itself. There is 
need of an enharmonic change, at this point ; and it 
might have been effected, perhaps, by a slower passage 
from gloom to gladness just here, and a more frequent 
play of the brighter mood throughout the book. But 
the tragic predilection seems ultimately to gain the day 
over the comic, in every great creative mind, and it was 
so strong with Hawthorne, that instead of giving greater 
play to humor in later fictions, it curtailed it more and 
more, from the production of the " Seven Gables " on- 
ward. 

Mr. Curtis has shown me a letter written soon after 
the publication of the new book, which, as it gives an- 
other instance of the writer's keen enjoyment of other 
men's work, and ends with a glimpse of the life at Lenox, 
I will copy at length : — 



LETTER TO CURTIS. 239 

Lknox, April 29, 1851. 

My dear Howadji : — I ought to be ashamed (and so 
I really am) of not having sooner responded to your note of 
more than a month ago", accompanied as it was by the admi- 
rable " Nile Notes." The fact is, I have been waiting to find 
myself in an eminently epistolary mood, so that I might pay 
my thanks and compliments in a style not unworthy of the 
occasion. But the moment has not yet come, and doubtless 
never will ; and now I have delayed so long, that America and 
England seem to have anticipated me in their congratulations. 

1 read the book aloud to my wife, and both she and I have 
felt that we never knew anything of the Nile before. There is 
something beyond descriptive power in it. You make me feel 
almost as if we had been there ourselves. And then you are 

such a luxurious traveller The fragrance of your chi- 

bouqiie was a marvellous blessing to me. It cannot be con- 
cealed that I felt a little alarm, as I penetrated the depths of 
those chapters about the dancing-giiis, lest they might result 
in something not altogether accoi-dant with our New England 
morality ; and even now I hardly know whether we escaped 
the peril, or were utterly overwhelmed by it. But at any rate, 
those passages are gorgeous in the utmost degree. However, 
I suppose you are weary of praise ; and as 1 have nothing else 
to infiictj 1 may as well stop here. 

S and the children and I are plodding onward in good 

health, and in a fair medium state of prosperity ; and on the 
whole, we are quite the happiest family to be found anywhere. 
"We live in the ugliest little old red faj-m-house you ever 
saw 

What shall you write next ? For of course you are an 
author forever. I am glad, for the sake of the public, but not 
particularly so for your own. 

Very soon after the issue of the " Seven Gables," 
another lighter literary project Avas put into execu- 
tion. 



240 THE " WONDER-BOOK." 

" I mean [he had announced on the 23d of May] to write 
within six weeks or two months next ensuing, a book of stories 
made up of classical myths. The subjects are : The Story of 
Midas, with his Golden Touch; Pandora's Box ; The Adventure 
of Hercules in Quest of the Golden Apples ; Bellerophon and 
the Chimera; Baucis and Philemon ; Perseus and Medusa." 

The " Wonder-Book " was begun on the first of June, 
and finished by the middle of July ; so that the intention 
of writing it within six weeks was strictly carried out : 
certainly a rapid acliievement, considering the excel- 
lent proportion and finish bestowed upon the book. It 
is a minor work, but a remarkable one ; not its least im- 
portant trait being the perfect simplicity of its style and 
scope, which, nevertheless, omits nothing essential, and 
preserves a thorough elegance. Its peculiar excellences 
come out still more distinctly whau contrasted with 
Charles Kingsley's " The Heroes ; or, Greek Fairy Tales," 
published in England five years after the appearance of 
the " Wonder-Book " here. The fresher play of Haw- 
thorne's mind with those old subjects is seen in nothing 
more agreeably than in the graceful Introduction and 
interludes which he has thrown around the mythological 
tales, like the tendrils of a vine curling over a sculptured 
capital. This midsummer task — it was very uncommon 
for him to write in the hot season — perhaps had some- 
thing to do with further unsettling Hawthorne's health, 
which at this time was not good. The somewhat slug- 
gish atmosphere of the far inland valley did not suit his 
sea-braced temperament ; and so, instead of renting Mrs. 
Kemble's country place, as he had thought of doing, he 
decided to leave Berkshire with the birds; but not to 
go southward. Moving to West Newton, near Boston, 
he remained there for the winter, writing " Blithedale," 
which was put forth in 1852. 



" BLITHEDALE." 241 

The special characteristic of " The Blithedale Ro- 
mance " seems to me to be its appearance of unlabored 
easCj and a consequent breeziness of effect distinguishing 
its atmosphere from that of any of the other romances. 
The style is admirably finished, and yet there is no part 
of the book that gives the same impression of almost un- 
necessary polish which occasionally intervenes between 
one's admiration and the " Seven Gables." On this 
score, "Blithedale" is certainly the most consummate of 
tlie four completed romances. And as Hawthorne has 
now^here given us more robust and splendid characteriza- 
tion than that of Zenobia and Hollingsworth, the work 
also takes high rank on this ground. The shadows, 
which seemed partly dispersed in the " Seven Gables," 
gather again in this succeeding story ; but, on the other 
hand, it is not so jarringly terrible as " The Scarlet Let- 
ter," From this it is saved partly by the sylvan sur- 
rounding and the pleasant changes of scene. In compar- 
ing it with the other works, I find tiiat it lets itself be 
best defined as a mean between extremes ; so that it 
ought to have the credit of being the most evenly attem- 
pered .of all. The theme is certainly as deep as that 
of the earlier ones, and more tangible to the general 
reader than that of " The Marble Faun " ; it is also more 
novel than that of " The Scarlet Letter " or even the 
" Seven Gables," and has an attractive air of growing sim- 
ply and naturally out of a phenomenon extremely common 
in New England, namely, the man who is dominated and 
blinded by a theory. And the way in which Hollings- 
worth, through this very prepossession and absorption, is 
brought to the ruin of his own scheme, and has to con- 
centrate his charity for criminals upon himself as the first 
criminal needing reformation, is very masterly. Yet, in 
discussing the relative positions of these four works.. I 
11 r 



242 COOPER MEMORIAL LETTER. 

am not sure that we can reach any decision more stable 
than that of mere preference. 

There is a train of thought suggested in " Blithedale " 
which receives only partial illustration in tliat story, 
touching the possible identity of love and hate. It had 
evidently engaged Hawthorne from a very early period, 
and would have made rich material for an entire ro- 
mance, or for several treating different phases of it. 
Perhaps he would have followed out the suggestion, but 
for the intervention of so many years of unproductive- 
ness in the height of his powers, and his subsequent too 
early death. 

It was while at West Newton, just before coming to 
the Wayside, that he wrote a note in response to an invi- 
tation to attend the memorial meeting at New York, in 
honor of the novelist. Cooper, which should be read for 
its cordial admiration of a literary brother, and for the 
tender thought of the closing sentence. 



*o' 



To Rev. R. W. Griswold. 

Febraary 20, 1852. 
Dear Sir: — I greatly regret that circumstances render it 
impossible for me to be present on the occasion of Mr. Bryant's 
discourse in honor of James Feniniore Cooper. No man has 
a better right to be present than myself, if many years of most 
sincere and unwavering admiration of Mr. Cooper's writings 
can establish a claim. It is gratifying to observe the eai'nest- 
ness with which the literary men of our country unite in pay- 
ing honor to the deceased; and it may not be too much to 
liope that, in the eyes of the public at large, American litera- 
ture may henceforth acquire a weight and value which have not 
heretofore been conceded to it : time and death have begun to 
hallow it. Very respectfully yours, 

Nathaniel Hawthorne. 



DESCRIPTION OF THE WAYSIDE. 243 

Early in the summer of 1852 he went to Concord 
again, where he had bought a small house, there to estab- 
lish his permanent home. Mr, Curtis was at this time 
writing some chapters for a book on " The Homes of 
American Authors," among which was to be included the 
new abode of Hawthorne. The project called forth from 
the romancer this letter : — 

Concord, July 14, 1852. 
My dear Howadji : — I think (and am glad to think) 
that you will find it necessary to come hither in order to 
write your Concord Sketches ; and as for my old house, you 
will understand it better after spending a day or two in it. 
Before Mr. Alcott took it in hand, it was a mean-looking 
affair, with two peaked gables ; no suggestiveness about it and 
no venerableness, although from the style of its construction it 
seems to have survived beyond its first century. He added a 
porch in front, and a central peak, and a piazza at each end, 
and painted it a rusty olive hue, and invested the whole with 
a modest picturesqueness ; all which improvements, together 
with its situation at the foot of a wooded hill, make it a place 
that one notices and remembers for a few moments after pass- 
ing it. Mr. Alcott expended a good deal of taste and some 
money (to no great i)urpose) iu forming the hillside behind the 
house into terraces, and building arbors and summer-houses of 
rough stems aud branches and trees, on a system of his own. 
They must have been very pretty in their day, and are so still, 
although much decayed, and shattered more and more by every 
breeze that blows. The hillside is covered chiefly with locust- 
trees, which come into luxuriant blossom in the month of June, 
and look and smell very sweetly, intermixed with a few young 
elms and some white-pines and infant oaks, — the whole form- 
ing rather a thicket than a wood. Nevertheless, there is some 
very good shade to be found there. I spend delectable hours 
there iu the hottest part of the day, stretched out at my lazy 
length, with a book iu my hand or an unwritten book in my 



244 THOREAU'S LEGEND. 

thoughts. There is almost always a breeze stirring along the 
sides or brow of the hill. 

From the hill-top there is a good view along the extensive 
level surfaces and gentle, hilly outlines, covered with wood, that 
characterize the scenery of Concord. We have not so much as 
a gleam of lake or river in the prospect ; if there were, it 
"would add greatly to the value of the place in my estimation. 

The house stands within ten or fifteen feet of the old Boston 
road (along which the British marched and retreated), divided 
from it by a fence, and some trees and shrubbery of Mr. Al- 
cott's setting out. Whereupon I have called it " The Way- 
side," which I think a better name and more morally suggestive 
than that which, as Mr. Alcott has since told me, he bestowed 
on it, — " The Hillside." In front of the house, on the oppo- 
site side of the road, I have eight acres of land, — the only valu- 
able portion of the place in a farmer's eye, and which are 
capable of being made very fertile. On the hither side, my 
territory extends some little distance over the brow of the hill, 
and is absolutely good for nothing, in a productive point of 
view, though very good for many other purposes. 

I know ^thing of the history of the house, except Tho- 
reau's telling me that it was inhabited a generation or two ago 
by a man who believed he should never die.* I believe, how- 
ever, he is dead ; at least, I hope so ; else he may probably 
appear and dispute my title to his residence 

I asked Ticknor to send a copy of " The Blithedale Romance " 
to you. Do not read it as if it had anything to do with Brook 
Farm (which essentially it has not), but merely for its own 
story and character. Truly yours, 

Nathaniel Hawthorne. 

The Wayside was, perhaps, so named in remembrance 
of the time when its owner had " sat down by the wayside 

* This is the first intimation of the story of Septimius Felton, so far as 
local setting is concerned. Tlie scenery of that romance was obviously 
taken from the Wayside and its hill. 



BIOGRAPHY OF PIERCE. 245 

like a man under enchant ment." It characterized well, 
too, his mental attitude in maturity ; though the spell 
that held him now was charged with happiness. The 
house itself was small, but the proprietor might have 
carved on his lintel the legend over Ariosto's door, Far- 
va, sed apt a miki. In October, 1852, he wrote to Bridge 
that he intended to begin a new romance within a day or 
two, which he should make " more genial " than the last. 
What design this was cannot now be even conjectured. 
Hawthorne had written, in the preceding year, " I find 
that my facility of labor increases with the demand for 
it " ; and he always felt that an unlimited reserve of in- 
vention and imagination awaited his drafts upon it, so 
that he could produce as many books as he might have 
time for writing. But circumstances again called him 
away from ideal occupations. Just as he was preparing 
to write the "Tanglewood Tales," as a sequel to the 
" Wonder-Book," General Pierce, the Democratic nomi- 
nee for President, urged him to write his biography, -^s a 
"campaign" measure. "I have consented to do cO," 
wrote Hawthorne, to his publisher; " somewhat reluc- 
tantly, however, for Pierce has now reached that altitude 
where a man careful of his personal dignity will begin to 
think of cutting his acquaintance. But I seek nothing 
from him, and therefore need not be ashamed to tell the 
truth of an old friend." To Bridge, after the book was 
out, he wrote much more confidentially and strongly. 
" I tried to persuade Pierce that I could not perform it 
as well as many others ; but he thought diiferently, and 
of course, after a friendship of thirty years, it was impos- 
sible to refuse my best efforts in his behalf, at the great 
pinch of his life." In this letter, also, he states that 
before undertaking the work, he resolved to "accept no 
office " from Pierce ; though he raises the query whether 



246 BIOGRAPHY OF PIERCE. 

this be not " ratlier folly than heroism." In discussing 
this point, he says, touching Pierce : — 

" He certainly owes me something ; for the biography has 
cost me hundreds of friends here at the North, who had 
a purer regard for me than Frank Pierce or any other poli- 
tician ever gained, and who drop off from me like autumn 
leaves, in consequence of what I say on the slavery question. 
But they were my real sentiments, and I do not now regret 
that they are on record." 

These have to do with Hawthorne's attitude during 
the war. Speaking of Pierce's indorsement of the Com- 
promise, both as it bore hard on Northern views and 
exacted concessions from the South thought by it to be 
more than reciprocal, he says : — 

" It was impossible for him not to take his stand as the un- 
shaken advocate of Union, and of the mutual steps of compro- 
mise which that great object unquestionably demanded. The 
fiercest, the least scrupulous, and the most consistent of those 
who battle against slavery recognize the same fact that he does. 
They see that merely human wisdom and human efforts cannot 
subvert it, except by tearing to pieces the Constitution, break- 
ing the pledges which it sanctions, and severing into distracted 
fragments that common country which Providence brought 
into one nation, through a continued miracle of almost two 
hundred years, from the tirst settlement of the American 
wilderness until the Revolution." 

He predicted, too, the evils of forcible abolition being 
certain, and the good only a contingency, that the ne- 
groes would suffer aggravated injuries from the very 
process designed to better their state. It is useless 
here to enter into the question of degrees of right and 
wrong on either side, in the struggle which had already 



BIOGRAPHY OF PIERCE. 247 

become formidable before Pierce's election; but one can 
see how sincerely, and with what generous motives, a 
man like Hawthorne would feel that the Union must 
be maintained peacefully. Without questioning the un- 
doubted grandeur of achievement which we sanely fell 
upon through the insane fit of civil war, we may recog- 
nize a deep patriotism consistent with humanity which 
forced itself to dissent from the noble action of the 
fighters, because it could not share in any triumph, how- 
ever glorious, that rested on the shedding of brothers' 
blood. It was this kind of humanity that found shelter 
in the heart of Hawthorne. 

Unwelcome as was the task, he wrote the biography of 
Pierce, in friendship, but in good faith also, even seeing 
the elements of greatness in his old classmate, which 
might yet lead him to a career.* He had not much 
hope of his friend's election, but when that occurred, 
the question of office, which he had already mooted, was 
definitely brought before him. When Pierce learned that 

* As a literary performance, the book is of course hut slightly 
characteristic ; and being distasteful to the author, it is even 
diy. Yet there is a great deal of simple dignity about it. The 
Whig journals belabored it manfully, and exhausted the re- 
sources of those formidable weapons, italics and small capitals, 
in the attempt to throw a ridiculous light on the facts most 
creditable to Pierce. Hawthorne came in for a share of the 
abuse too. One newspaper called the book his "new ro- 
mance " ; another made him out a worthy disciple of Simoni- 
des, who was the first poet to write for money. The other 
party, of course, took quite another view of the work. A 
letter to Hawthorne from his elder sister bears well upon his 

fidelity. " Mr. D has bought your Life of Pierce, but he 

will not be convinced that you have told the precise truth. 
I assure him that it is just what I have always heard you say." 



248 BIOGRAPHY OF PIERCE. 

Le positively would not take an office, because to do so 
now might compromise liim, he was extremely troubled. 
He had looked forward to giving Hawthorne some one 
of the prizes in his hand, if he should be elected. But 
the service he had exacted from his friend threatened 
to deprive Hawthorne of the very benefit which Pierce 
had been most anxious he should receive. At last, Mr. 
Ticknor, Hawthorne's pubHsher, was made the agent of 
Pierce's arguments, and to them he added personal con- 
siderations which were certainly not without weight. 
Literature gave but a bare subsistence, and Hawthorne 
was no longer young, having passed his forty-ninth year. 
His books were not likely, it seemed, to fill the breach 
that would be made in the fortunes of his family, were 
he to be suddenly removed. This, Mr. Ticknor urged, 
in addition to the friendly obligation which Pierce ought 
to be allowed to repay. Hawthorne, as we have seen, 
had always wished to travel, and the prospect of some 
years in Europe was an alluring one : the decision was 
made, to take the Liverpool consulship. 

The appointment was well received, though many per- 
sons professed surprise that Hawthorne could accept it. 
One gentleman in public life, however, who knew how 
unjust current judgments may often be, was not of this 
number, as appears from his note below. — 

Senatk Chambeb, March 26, 1853. 
My dear Hawthorne: — "Good! good!" I exclaimed 
aloud ou the floor of the Senate as your nomination was an- 
nounced. 

" Good ! good ! " I now write to you, on its confirmation. 
Nothing could be more grateful to nie. Before you go, 1 hoiie 
to see you. 

Ever yours, 

Charles Sumner. 



IX. 



ENGLAND AND ITALY. 



1853-1860. 




T is very instructive to trace the contact of Haw- 
tliorne's mind with Europe, as exhibited in liis 
" Euglisli Note-Books " and " French and Italian 
!S^ote-Books." But in these records three things are es- 
pecially observable. He goes to Europe as unperturbed, 
with an individual mood as easily sustained, as he would 
enter Boston or New York. He carries no preconception 
of what may be the most admirable way of looking at it. 
There has never been a more complete and charming pre- 
sentment of a multitude of ingenuous impressions common 
to many travellers of widely differing endowment than 
liere, at the same time that you have always before you the 
fiuished writer and the possible romancer, who suddenly 
and without warning flashes over his pages of quiet de- 
scription a far, fleeting light of delicious imagination. 
It is as if two brothers, one a dreamer, and one a well- 
developed, intellectual, but slightly stoical and even 
shrewd American, dealing exclusively in common-sense, 
had gone abroad together, agreeing to write their opin- 
ions in the same book and in a style of perfect homoge- 
neity. Sometimes one has the blank sheet to himself, 
sometimes the other ; and occasionally they con each 
11* 



250 new' grace foe, the old world. 

other's paragraphs, and the second modifies the ideas of ', 
the first. It is interesting to note their twofold inspec- 
tion of Westminster Hall, for example. The understand- 
ing- tM^n examines it methodically, finding its length to 
be eighty paces, and its effect " the ideal of an immense 
barn." The reasoning and imagining one interposes to 
this, "be it not irreverently spoken" ; and also conjures 
up this splendid vision : " I wonder it does not occur to 
modern ingenuity to make a scenic representation, in this 
very hall, of the ancient trials for life or death, pomps, 
feasts, coronations, and every great historic incident .... 
that has occurred hero. The Avhole world cannot show 
another hall such as this, so tapestried with recollections.'* 
But in any case it is always apparent that the thought is 
colored by a New World nurture. From this freshness 
of view there proceeded one result, the searching, un- 
embarrassed, yet sympathetic and, as we may say, cordial 
criticism of England in "Our Old Home." But it also 
gave rise to the second notable quality, that exquisite ap- 
prehension of the real meaning of things European, both 
institutions and popular manners and the varied products 
of art. At times, Hawthorne seems to have been born for ' 
the one end of adding this final grace of definition which 1 
he so deftly attaches to the monuments of that older civil- 
ization. He brings a perception so keen and an innate j 
sympathy so true for everything beautiful or significant, j 
tliat the mere flowing out of this fine intellectual atmos- j 
phere upon the objects before him invests them with a | 
quality which we feel to be theirs, even while we know 
that it could not have become out^s without his aid. A 
breath of New England air touches the cathedral windows 
of the Old World, and — 1 had almost said — bedims 
them with a film of evanescent frost-work; yet, as that 
lingers, we suddenly discern through the veil a charm, a 



THE SECRET OF "TASTE." 251 

legendary fascination in tlieir deep-gemmed gorgeousness, \ 
which, althoLigli we have felt it and read of it before, 
we never seized till now. I speak, of course, from the \ 
American point of view ; though in a great measure the 
effect upon foreign readers may be similar. But I fancy 
a special appropriateness for us in the peculiar mixture 
of estimation and enthusiasm which forms the medium 
through which Hawthorne looks at the spectacle of trans- 
atlantic life and its surroundings. He visits the Britisli 
Museum, and encounters only disappointment at the 
mutilated sculptures of the Parthenon ; but out of this 
confession, which is truth, slowly arises the higher truth 
of that airy yet profound response with which he greets 
the multiform mute company of marble or painted shapes 
that form the real population of Rome. Even there, he 
has much dissent to make, still ; and we may not find it 
at all essential or beneficial to follow each of his deviations 
ourselves. But however we may differ with him, it is 
impossible not to feel sure that within this circle of con- 
tradictions, of preference for new frames and of his friend 
Thompson's pictures to all but a very few of the old mas- 
ters', somewhere within there is a perfectly trustworthy 
aesthetic sensibility which grasps the " unwritten rules of 
taste," the inmost truth of all art. This inmost secret is, 
liowever we may turn it, a matter of paradox, and the 
moment it professes to be explained, that moment are the , 
gates of the penetralia shut upon us. The evasiveness 
and the protest, then, with which Hawthorne discourses 
to himself as he wanders through the galleries of Europe, 
are the trembling of the needle, perfectly steadfast to the 
polar opposites of truth, yet quivering as with a fear that 
it may be unsettled by some artificial influence from its 
deep office of inner constancy. And as if, in this singular 
world, all truth must turn to paradox at the touch of an 



252 HAWTHORNE, EMERSON, TAINE. 

; index finger^ tliat almost faulty abstention from assuming 
the European tone %vliich has made Hawthorne the trav- 
eller appear to certain readers a little crude, — that very 
air of being the uncritical and sliglitly puzzled American 
is precisely the source of his most delightful accuracies of 
interpretation. 

/ The third greatest distinction of his foreign observation 
is its entire freedom from specialism. Perhaps this cannot 
be made to appear more clearly than in the contrast 
presented by his "English Note-Books" and "Our Old 
Home" to Emerson's "English Traits," and Taine's 
" Notes on England." The latter writer is an acute, 
alert, industrious, and picturesque comparer of his own 
and a neighboring country, and is accompanied by a light 
battery of literary and pictorial criticism, detached from 
his heavier home armament. Emerson, on the other 
hand, gives us probably the most masterly and startling 
analysis of a people which has ever been offered in the 
same slight bulk, unsurpassed, too, in brilliancy and pen- 
etration of statement. But the " English Traits " is as 
clear, fixed, and accurate as a machinist's plan, and per- 
haps a little too rigidly defined. Hawthorne's review of 
England, though not comparable to Emerson's work for 
analysis, has this advantage, that its outline is more flexi- 
ble and leaves room for many individual discriminations 
to which it supplies an easily harmonized groundwork. 
Emerson and Taine give us their impressions of a foreign 
land : Hawthorne causes us to inhale its very atmosphere, 
and makes tlie country ours for the time being, rather 
than an alien area which Ave scrutinize in passing. 
Yet here and there he partakes of the very qualities 
that are dominant with Emerson and Taine. "Every 
Englishman runs to 'The Times' with his little grievance, 
as a child runs to his mother," is as epigrammatic as 



PHOPOSED ENGLISH ROMANCE. 253 

anything in "Englisli Traits" ; * and there is a tendency 
in his pages to present the national character in a con- 
crete form, as the French writer gives it. But, in addi- 
tion, Hawthorne is an artist and a man of humor; and 
renders liuinan character with a force and fineness which 
give it its true value as being, after all, far weightier and 
dearer to us than the most important or famous of con- 
gealed remits of character. Withal a wide and keen ob- 
server and a hospitable entertainer of opinions, lie does 
not force these upon us as final. Coming and going at 
ease, they leave a mysterious sense of greater wisdom 
with us, an indefinable residue of refined truth. 

It is a natural question, why did not Hawthorne write 
an English romance, as well, or rather than an Italian 
one ? More than lialf his stay abroad was north of the 
Channel, and one would infer that there could have been 
no lack of suggestion there. " My ancestor left Eng- 
land," he wrote, "in 1630. I return in 1853. I some- 
times feel as if I myself had been absent these two 
hundred and twenty-three years, leaving England just 
emerging from the feudal system, and finding it, on my 
return, on the verge of republicanism." Herein lay a 
source of romantic possibilities from which he certainly 
meant to derive a story. But the greater part of his four 
years in England was spent in Liverpool, where his cou- 

* No one, I think, has so well defined our relation to the 
English as Hawthorne, in a casual phrase from one of his 
printed letters : " We stand in the light of posterity to them, 
and have the privileges of posterity." This, on London, ought 
to become proverbial : " London is like the grave in one re- 
spect, — any man can make himself at home there ; and when- 
ever a man finds himself homeless elsewhere, he had better die, 
or go to London." 



254 ITALY AGAINST ENGLAND. 

sular duties suppressed fiction-making.* Hawthorne's 
genius was extremely susceptible to every influence about 
it. One might liken its quality to that of a violin which 
owes its fine properties to the tempering of time and 
atmosphere, and transmits through its strings the very 
thrill of sunshine that has sunk into its wood. His utter- 
ances are modulated by the very changes of the air. In 
one of his letters from Florence he wrote : — 

" Speaking of romances, I have planned two, one or both of 
which I could have ready for the press in a few months if I 
were either in England or America. But I find this Italian 
atmosphere not favorable to the close toil of composition, 
although it is a very good air to dream in. I must breathe 
the fogs of old England or the east-winds of Massachusetts, 
in order to put me into working trim." 

But though England might be his workshop for books 
dreamed of in Italy, yet the aspect of English life seems 
much more fittingly represented by his less excursively 
imaginative side, as in " Our Old Home," than in a ro- 
mance. Perhaps this is too ingenious a consolation ; but 
I believe we may much better spare the possible Eng- 
lish romance, than we could have foregone the actual 
Italian one. 

In "The Marble Eaun" Hawthorne's genius took 

* And it was not till he reached the villa of Montauto at 
Florence that he could write : — 

" It is pleasant to feel at last that I am really away from America, — 
a satisfaction that 1 never enjoyed as long as I stayed in Liverpool, -where 
it seemed to me that the quintessence of nasal and hand-shaking Yankee- 
dom was continually filtered and sublimated through my consulate, on 
the way outward and homeward. I first got acquainted with my own 
countrymen there. At Rome, too, it was not much ))etter. But here in 
Florence, and in tlie summer-time, and in this secluded villa, I have 
escaped out of all my old tracks, and am really remote." 



WIDE SCOPE OF •' MARBLE FAUN." 255 

a more daring and impressive range than ever before, 
and sliowed conclusively — what, without this testimony, 
would most likely have been questioned, or even by some 
denied — that his previous works had given the arc of 
a circle which no English or American writer of prose 
fiction besides himself has even begun to span. It is 
not alone that he plucks from a prehistoric time — ■ 
" a period when man's affinity with nature was more 
strict, and his fellowship with every living thing more 
intimate and dear" — this conception of Donatello, the 
fresh, free, sylvan man untouched by sin or crime. 
Donatello must rank with a class of poetic creations 
which has nearly become extinct among modern writ- 
ers : he belongs to the world of Caliban, Puck, and 
Ariel. But besides this unique creation, the book reveals 
regions of thought wide, ruin-scarred, and verdurously 
fair as the Campagna itself, winning the mind back 
througli history to the primitive purity of man and of 
Christianity. I recoil from any attempt at adequate 
analysis of this marvellous production, for it is one of 
those works of art which are also works of nature, and 
will present to each thoughtful reader a new set of mean- 
ings, according to his individuality, insight, or experi- 
ence. The most obvious part of the theme is that which 
is represented in the title, the study of the Faun's nature ; 
and this embraces the whole question of sin and crime, 
tlieir origin and distinction. But it is not the case, as 
has been assumed, that in this study the author takes the 
position of advocate to a theory ^that sin was requisite to 
the development of soul in man. i For, though he shows 
that remorse developed in Donatello " a more definite 
and nobler individuality," he also reminds us that " some- 
times the instruction comes without the sorrow, and 
oftener the sorrow teaches no lesson that abides with 



256 ITS RELIGIOUS ASPECT. 

US " ; and he illustrates this in the exquisite height of 
spirituality to which Hilda has attahied through sinless- 
iiess. He is not, I say, the advocate of a theory : this 
charge has been made by self-confident critics, who saw 
only tlie one idea, — that of a Beneficence which has so 
handled sin, that, instead of destro3dng man, " it lias 
really become an instrument most effective in the edu- 
cation of intellect and soul." This idea is several times 
urged by Miriam and Kenyon, but quickly rejected 
each time ; first by Kenyon, and then by Hilda ; so that, 
while it is suggested, it is also shown to be one which 
human nature cannot trust itself to dwell upon. But 
the real function of the author is that of a profound 
religious teacher. The "Romance of Monte Beni" is, 
as Miriam plainly says, the story of the fall of man 
repeated. It takes us with fearless originality to the 
source of all religious problems, affirming, — as one in- 
terpreter * has said, — " the inherent freedom of man," 
and illustrating how he may choose the good or the evil. 
Donatello is the ideal of the childlike nature on the 
threshold of history who has lived without choosing either, 
up to the time when his love and defence of Miriam 
involve him in crime. Father Antonio, " the spectre of 
the catacombs," and Miriam's persecutor, is the outcome 
of a continual choice of evil and of utter degradation. 
These two extremes, more widely asunder than Prospero 
and Caliban, Hawthorne has linked together in his im- 
mense grasp of the inmost laws of life, and with a mirac- 
ulous nicety of artistic skill. Then comes Donatello's fall, 
illustrating the genesis of sin from crime, in accordance 
with the Biblical story of Cain ; and this precipitates an 

* See an unsigned article, " The Genius of Hawthorne," in 
the Atlantic Monthly for September, 1868. 



THE PROBLEM OF BEATRICE. • 257 

examination, not only of the result upon Donatello him- 
self, but of the degree in whicli others, even the most 
guiltless, are involved. Tliere is first the reaction upon 
and inculpation of Miriam, whose glance had confirmed 
Donatello's murderous intent; only a glance, yet enough 
to involve her in the doom of change and separation — 
of sin in short — which falls upon the Faun. And in 
Hilda's case, it is the simple consciousness of another's 
guilt, which is " almost the same as if she had partici- 
pated" in it. The mutual relations of these persons, 
who are made to represent the whole of society, afford 
matter for infinite meditation, the artistic and moral 
abstract of which the author has given. 

But with this main theme is joined a very marvellous 
and intricate study of the psychology of Beatrice Cenci's 
story, in a new form. Miriam is a different woman 
placed in the same circumstances which made the Cenci 
tragedy. In the "French and Italian Note-Books," 
Hawthorne describes the look he caught sight of in 
Guido's picture, — that " of a being unhumanized by 
some terrible fate, and gazing out of a remote and inac- 
cessible region, where she was frightened to be alone, 
but where no human sympathy could reach her." It 
was of this single insight that both Miriam and Hilda 
were born to his mind. He reproduces this description, 
slightly modified, in the romance (Vol. I. Chap. XXIIl.) : 
"It was the intimate consciousness of her father's guilt 
that threw its shadow over her, and frightened her into " 
this region. Now, in the chapter called "Beatrice," 
quite early in the story, he brings out between Miriam 
and Hilda a discussion of Beatrice and her history. It 
is evident, from the emphasis given by the chapter-title, 
that this subject is very deeply related to the theme of 
the romance ; and no theory can explain Miriam's pas- 

Q 



258 Mini AM AND HILDA. 

sioiiate utterances about tlie copy of Guido's portrait, 
except that wliicli supposes lier own situation to be that 
of Beatrice. This chapter is full of the strongest hints 
of tlie fact. Miriam's sudden resemblance to the picture, 
at the instant when she so yearns to grasp the secret of 
Beatrice's view of her own guilt or innocence ; her ardent 
defence of Beatrice's course, as " the best virtue possible 
under the circumstances," when Hilda condemns it ; her 
suggestion that, after all, only a woman could have 
painted the poor girl's thoughts upon her face, and that 
she Jierselfhdi^ " a great mind to undertake a copy," giv- 
ing it " what it lacks " ; — all these things point clearly. 
But there is a mass of inferential evidence, besides ; 
many veiled allusions and approaches to a revelation, as 
well as that very marked description of the sketches in 
which Miriam has portrayed in various moods a " woman 
acting the part of a revengeful mischief towards man," 
and the hint, in the description of her portrait of herself, 
that " she might ripen to be what Judith was, when she 
vanquished Holofernes with her beauty, and slew him 
for too much adoring it." There is no need to pursue 
the proof further: readers will easily find it on re- 
examining the book. But what is most interesting, is to 
observe how HaM^thorne has imagined two women of 
natures so widely opposed as Hilda and Miriam under a 
similar pressure of questionable blood-guiltiness. With 
Miriam, it is a guilt which has for excuse that it was 
tlie only resort against an unnatural depravity in Father 
Antonio. But as if to emphasize the indelibleness of 
blood-stains, however justly inflicted, we have as a foil 
to Miriam the white sensitiveness of Hilda's conscience, 
which makes her — though perfectly free from even the 
indirect responsibihty of Miriam — believe herself actu- 
ally infected. In both cases, it is the shadow of crime 



CONTRAST WITH SHELLEY. 259 

which weighs upon the soul ; but Miriam, in exactly the 
position of Beatrice Cenci, is a more complex and deep- 
colored nature than she ; and Hilda, differently affected 
by the same question of conscience, is a vastly spiritual- 
ized image of the historic sufferer. Miriam, after the 
avenging of her nameless wrong, doubts, as Beatrice must 
have done, whether there be any guilt in such avenge- 
ment ; but being of so different a temperament, and hav- 
ing before her eyes the effect of this murder upon the 
hitherto sinless Eaun, the reality of her responsibility is 
brought home to her. The clear conscience of Hilda 
confirms it. Thus by taking two extremes on either side 
of Beatrice, — one, a woman less simply and ethereally 
organized, and the other one who is only indirectly con- 
nected with wrong or crime, — Hawthorne seems to ex- 
tract from the problem of Beatrice all its most subtle sig- 
nificance. He does not coldly condemn Beatrice ; but by 
re-combining the elements of her case, he succeeds in 
magnifying into startling distinctness the whole awful 
knot of crime and its consequence, which lies inextricably 
tangled up within it. How different from Shelley's use 
of the theme ! There is certainly nothing in the " Marble 
Taun" to equal the impassioned expression of wrong, 
and the piercing outcry against the shallow but awful 
errors of human justice, which uplift Shelley's drama. 
But Shelley stops, on the one side, with this climax : — 

" plead 
"With famine or wind-walking pestilence. 
Blind lightning or the deaf sea, not with man ! " 

And on the side of the moral question, he leaves us with 
Beatrice's characterization of the parricide, 

" Which is, or is not, what men call a crime." 



260 A NEW PURITANISM. 

Hawthorne, on the contrary, starts from this latter 
doubt. " The foremost result of a broken law," he says, 
"is ever an ecstatic freedom." But instead of pausing 
to give this his whole weight, as Shelley does, he dis- 
tinctly pronounces the murder of Miriam's degraded 
father to be crime, and proceeds to inquire how Miriam 
and Donatello may work out their purification. So that 
if the first part of tlie romance is the Fall of Man i*e- 
peated, the second part is the proem to a new Paradise 
Regained ; and the seclusion of the sculptor and tlie 
Faun, and their journey together to Perugia, seasoned 
with Kenyon's noble and pure-hearted advice, compose 
a sort of seven-times-refined Pilgrim's Progress. Apt 
culmination of a genius whose relations to Milton and 
Bunyan we found to be so suggestive ! The chief means 
which Kenyon off'ers for regeneration is that Miriam and 
the Faun shall abandon any hope of mutual joy, and 
consecrate tliemselves to the alleviation of misery in the 
world. Having by violence and crime thrust one evil 
out of life, tliey are now by patience and benevolence to 
endeavor to exorcise others. At the same time, remark- 
ing that Providence has infinitely varied ways of dealiug 
with any deed, Hawthorne leaves a possibility of happi- 
ness for tlie two penitents, which may become theirs as 
"a wayside flower, springing along a path that leads 
to higher ends." But he also shows, in Donatello's final 
delivering of himself up to justice, the wisdom of some 
definite judgment and perhaps punishment bestowed by 
society. Thus, avenues of tliought are opened to us on 
every side, wliicli we are at liberty to follow out ; but 
^ve are not forced, as a mere theorist would compel us, to 
pursue any particular one to the exclusion of the others. 
In all we may find our way to some mystic monument of 
eternal law, or pluck garlands from some new-budded 



RECEPTION OF THE ROMANCE. 261 

bough of moral trutli. The romance is like a portal of 
ebony inlaid with ivory, — auullier gate of dreams, — 
swinging softly open into regions of illimitable wisdom. 
But some pause on the threshold, unused to such large 
liberty ; and these cry out, in the words of a well-known 
critic, " It begins in mystery, and ends in mist." 

Though the book was very successful, few readers 
grasped the profounder portions. It is a vast exemplar 
of the author's consummate charm as a simple story- 
teller, however, that he exercised a brilliant fascination 
over all readers, notwitlistanding the heavy burden of 
uncomprehended truths which they were obliged to carry 
with them. Some critics complain of the extent to which 
Roman scenery and the artistic life in Rome have been 
introduced; but, to my mind, there is scarcely a word 
wasted in the two volumes. Tlie " vague sense of pon- 
derous remembrances " pressing down and crowding out 
the present moment till " our individual affairs are but 
half as real here as elsewhere," is essential to the per- 
spective of the whole ; and nothing but this rich pictu- 
resqueness and variety could avail to balance the depth of 
tragedy which has to be encountered; so that the nicety 
of art is unquestionable. It is strange, indeed, that this 
great modern religious romance should thus have become 
also the ideal representative of ruined Home — the home 
of ruined religions — in its aesthetic aspects. But one 
instance of appreciation must be recorded here, as giving 
the highest pitch of tliat delightful literary fellowship 
which Hawthorne seems constantly to have enjoyed in 
England. His friend John Lothrop Motley, the histo- 
rian, wrote thus of " The Marble Eaun," from Walton- 
on-Thames, March 29, 1860 : — 

" Everything that you have ever written, I believe, I have 
read many times, and I am particularly vain of having admired 



262 MOTLEY'S TRIBUTE TO IT. 

' Sights from a Steeple,' when I first read it in the Boston 
' Token,' several hundred years ago, when we were both 
younger than we are now ; of having detected and cherished, at 
a later day, an old Apple-Dealer, whom, I believe, you have 
unhandsomely thrust out of your presence, now that you are 
grown so great. But the ' Romance of Monte Beni ' has the 
additional charm for me, that it is the first book of yours that 
I have read since I had the privilege of making your personal 
acquaintance. My memory goes back at once to those walks 
(alas, not too frequent) we used to take along the Tiber, or in 
the Campagna ; . . . . and it is delightful to get hold of the 
book now, and know that it is impossible for you any longer, 
after waving your wand as you occasionally did then, indicating 
where the treasure was hidden, to sink it again beyond plum- 
met's sound. 

" I admire the book exceedingly It is one which, for 

the first reading, at least, I did n't like to hear aloud If 

I were composing an article for a review, of course, I should 
feel obliged to show cause for my admiration ; but I am only 
obeying an impulse. Permit me to say, however, that your 
style seems, if possible, more perfect than ever. "Where, O 
where is the godmother who gave you to talk pearls and dia- 
monds ? .... Believe me, I don't say to you half what I say 
behind your back ; and I have said a dozen times that nobody 
can write English but you. With regard to the story, which 
has been somewhat criticised, I can only say that to me it is 
quite satisfactorj% I like those shadowy, weird, fantastic, Haw- 
thornesque shapes flitting through the golden gloom, which is 
the atmosphere of the book. I like the misty way in which 
the story is indicated rather than revealed ; the outlines are 
quite definite enough from the beginning to the end to those 
who have imagination enough to follow you in your airy flights ; 
and to those who complain, I suppose that nothing less than 
an illusti-ated edition, with a large gallows on the last page, 
with Donatello in the most pensile of attitudes, — his ears re- 
vealed through a white nightcap, — would be satisfactory. I 



HAWTHORNE'S UEPLY. 263 

beg your pardon for such profanation, but it really moves my 
spleen that people should wish to bring down the volatile figures 

of your romance to the level of an every-day romance 

The way in which the two victims dance through the Carnival 
on the last day is veiy striking. It is like a Greek tragedy in 
its effect, without being in the least Greek." 

To tills Hawthorne replied from Bath (April 1, 1860) ; 
and Mr. Motley has kindly sent me a copy of the letter. 

My DEAR Motley : — You are certainly that Gentle Reader 
for whom all my books were exclusively written. Nobody else 
(my wife excepted, who speaks so near me that I cannot tell 
her voice from my own) has ever said exactly what I loved to 
hear. It is most satisfactory to be hit upon the raw, to be 
shot straight through the heart. It is not the quantity of your 
praise that I care so much about (though I gather it all up 
most carefully, lavish as you are of it), but the kind, for you 
take the book precisely as I meant it ; and if your note had 
come a few days sooner, I believe I would have printed it in 
a postscript which I have added to the second edition, because 
it explains better than I found possible to do the way in which 

my romance ought to be taken Now don't suppose 

that I fancy the book to be a tenth part as good as you say it 
is. You work out my imperfect efforts, and half make the 
book with your warm imagination ; and see what I myself saw, 
but could only hint at. Well, the romance is a success, even 
if it never finds another reader. 

We spent the winter in Leamington, whither we had come 
from the sea-coast in October. I am sorry to say that it was 
another w^inter of sorrow and anxiety .... [The allusion here 
is to illness in the family, of which there had also been a pro- 
tracted case in Rome]. I have engaged our passages for June 
16th. .... Mrs. Hawthorne and the children will probably 
remain in Bath till the eve of our departure ; but I intend to 
pay one more visit of a week or two to London, and shall cer- 



264 CHAEM OF EUROPEAN LIFE. 

tainly come and see you. I wonder at your lack of recognition 
of my social propensities. I take so much delight in my 
friends, that a little intercourse goes a great way, and illumi- 
nates my life before and after 

Your friend, 

Nath. Hawthorne. 

These seven years in Europe formed, outwardly, the 
most opulently liappy part of Hawthorne's life. Before 
he left America, although lie had been writing — with 
several interruptions — for twenty-four years, he had 
only just reached a meagre prosperity. I have touched 
upon the petty clamor which his Custom-House pictures 
aroused, and the offensive political attacks following 
the Life of Pierce. These disagreeables, scattered along 
the way, added to the weary delay that had attended his 
first efforts, made the enthusiastic personal welcome with 
which he everywhere met in England, and the charm of 
highly organized society, wilh its powerful artistic classes 
centred upon great capitals there and in Italy, a very 
captivating contrast. Still there were drawbacks. The 
most serious one was the change in the consular service 
made during his term at Liverpool. The consulate there 
was considered the most lucrative post in the Presi- 
dent's gift, at the time of his appointment. But, to 
begin with. Pierce allowed the previous incumbent to 
resign prospectively, so that Hawthorne lost entirely the 
first five months of his tenure. These were very valuable 
months, and after the new consul came into office the 
dull season set in, reducing his fees materially. Business 
continued bad so long, that even up to 1855 little more 
than a living could be made in the consulate. In Eebi'U- 
ary of that year a bill was passed by Congress, remodel- 
ling tJie diplomatic and consular system, and fixing the 
salary of the Liverpool consul at $7,500, — less than 



PECUNIARY ANNOYANCES. 265 

half the amount of the best annual income from it before 
that time. The position was one of importance, and in- 
volved an expensive mode of life; so that even before 
tliis bill went into operation, though practising " as stern 
an economy," he wrote home, " as ever I did in my life," 
Hawthorne could save but little ; and the eifect of it 
would have been not only to prevent his accomplishing 
what lie took the office for, but even to have imposed 
loss upon him. For, in addition to social demands, the 
mere necessary office expenses (including the pay of three 
clerks) were very large, amounting to some thousands 
yearly ; and the needs of unfortunate fellow-citizens, to 
whom Hawtliorne could not bring himself to be indiffer- 
ent, carried off a good portion of his income. As he 
says, " If tlie government chooses to staiTC the consul, a 
good many will starve with him." The most irritating 
thing abont the new law was tliat it merely cut down 
the consular fees, without bringing the government any- 
thing; for the fees came from business that a notary- 
public could perform, and tlie consul Avould naturally 
decline to take it upon himself when his interest in it 
was removed. Fortunately, the President was given 
some discretion about the date of reappointment, and 
allowed the old commission to continue for a time. 
Meanwhile, Hawthorne was obliged, in anticipation of 
the new rule, to alter his mode of life materially. He 
now planned to give up the place in the autumn of 
1855, and go to Italy; but this was not carried out till 
two years later. 

Italy charmed him wholly, and he longed to make it 
his home. There had not been want of unjust criticism 
of him in America, while at Liverpool. When some ship- 
wrecked steamer passengers were thrown upon his hands, 
for whom he provided extra-officially, on Mr. Buchanan's 
12 



266 DUTY TOWARD AMERICA. 

(then minister) refusing to have anything to do with the 
matter, a newspaper rumor was started at home that Mr. 
Hawthorne would do nothing for them until ordered to 
by Mr. Buchanan. 

"It sickens me," he wrctc at that time, "to look back to 
America. I am sick to death of the continual fuss and tumult 
and excitement and bad blood which we keep up about politi- 
cal topics. If it were not for my children, I should probably 
never return." 

And on the eve of sailing, he wrote to another friend : — 

" I shall go home, I fear, with a heavy heart, not expecting to 
be very well contented there." 

But his sense of duty, stronger than that of many 
Americans under similar circumstances, was rigorously 
obeyed. We shall see what sort of reward this fidelity 
to country won from public opinion at home. 




X. 



THE LAST ROMANCE. 



1860-1863. 




HERE are in tlie "English Note-Books" several 
dismal and pathetic records of tragic cases of 
brutality or murder on shipboard, which it was 
Hawthorne's duty as consul to investigate. These things, 
as one might have divined they would, made a very strong 
and deep impression upon him; and he tried strenuously 
to interest the United States government in bettering the 
state of the marine by new laws. But though this evil 
was and is still quite as monstrous as that of slavery, 
there was no means of mixing up prejudice and jealousy 
with the reform, to help it along, and he could effect 
nothing. He resolved, on returning home, to write some 
articles — perhaps a volume — exposing the horrors so 
calmly overlooked ; but the slavery agitation, absorbing 
everybody, perhaps discouraged him : the scheme was 
never carried out. It is a pity; for, aside from the 
weight wjiich so eminent a name might have given to a 
good cause, the work would have clearly proven the 
quick, responsive, practical nature of his humanity — 
a quality which some persons have seen fit to deny him — 
in a case where no question of conflicting rights divided 
his sense of duty. 



268 THE QUESTION OF UNION. 

He came to America in June, 1860. Por several years 
tlie mutterings of rising war between the States had been 
growing louder. In June of 1856 he had written to 
Bridge, expressing great hope that all would yet turn 
out well. But so rapidly did the horizon blacken, that 
later in the same year he declared that "an actual 
fissure " seemed to him to be opening between the two 
sections of the country. In January, 1857: — 

" I regret that you think so doubtfully of the prospects of 
the Union ; for I should like well enough to hold on to the old 
thing. And yet I must confess that I sympathize to a large 
extent with the Northern feeling, and think it is about time for 
lis to make a stand. If compelled to choose, I go for the North. 
New England is quite as large a lump of earth as my heart 

can really take in However, I have no kindred with nor. 

leaning toward the Abolitionists." 

He felt, no doubt, that the vital principle of the Union 
from tlie beginning had been compromise, mutual conces- 
sion, and if it was to be severed, preferred that it should 
be peacefully. Still, his moods and wislies varied as did 
those of many careful watchers at that time ; and lie saw 
too clearly the arguments on either side to hold fixedly 
to one course. In the December after liis return, seces- 
sion began ; and for more than a year following he could 
not fix his attention upon literary matters. He wrote 
little, not even his journal, as Mrs. Hawthorne has told 
us, until 1862. Accustomed to respond accurately to 
every influence about him, with that sensitized exterior 
of receptive imagination which overlay the fixed sub- 
stance of personal character, — so that, as we have seen, 
even a change of climate left its impress on his produc- 
tions, — it was not strange that the emotions of horror 
and pain, the passion of hate, the splendid heroism which 



SECESSION AND ITS RESULTS. 269 

charged the whole atmosphere about him, now, should 
absorb his whole sensibility, and paralyze his iinagina- 
tion. It was no time for quiet observation or creative 
revery. A new era had broi<en upon us, ushered by tlie 
wild din of trumpet and cannon, and battle-cry ; an era 
which was to form new men, and shape a new generation. 
Ho must pause and listen to the agonies of this birth, 
striving vainly to absorb the commotion into himself and 
to let it subside iuto clear visions of the future. No 
hope ! He could not pierce the war-smoke to any hori- 
zon of better things. He who had schooled hiuiself so 
unceasingly to feel with utmost intensity the responsi- 
bility of each soul for any violence or crime of others, 
could not cancel the fact of multitudinous murder by any 
hypothesis of prospective benefit. Thus, in the midst 
of that maguificent turbulence, he was like the central 
quiet of a whirlpool: all the fierce currents met there, 
and seemed to pause, — but only seemed. Full of sym- 
pathy as he was for his fellows, and agitated at times 
by the same warlike impulses, he could not give himself 
rein as they did, nor dared to raise any encouraging 
strain in his writing, as others felt that they might 
freely do. His Puritan sense of justice, refiued by de- 
scent and wedded to mercy, compelled him to weigh all 
"carefully, to debate long and compassionately. But 
meantime the popular sense of justice — that same New 
England sentiment, of which his own was a development 
— cared nothing for these fine considerations, and Haw- 
thorne was generally condemned by it as being warped 
by his old Democratic alliances into what was called 
treason. Nevertheless, he was glad to be in his native 
land, and suft'er bitter criticism here, — if that were all 
that could be granted, — rather than to remain, an unmo- 
lested exile. 



270 LETTER TO LOWELL. 

All article which he contributed to the " Atlantic 
Monthly " in July, 18G2, gives a faint inkling of his 
state of mind at this time ; but nothing illustrates more 
clearly, either, the reserve which he always claimed lay 
behind his seemingly most frank expressions in print. 
Tor he there gives the idea of something like coldness 
in his attitude touching the whole great tragedy. But 
those who saw him daily, and knew his real mood, have 
remembered how deeply his heart was shaken by it. 
Fortunately, there are one or two epistolary proofs of 
the degree in which his sympathy with his own side of 
the struggle sometimes mastered him. He used to say 
that he only regretted that his son was too young and 
himself too old to admit of either of them entering the 
army ; and just after the first battle of Bull llun he 
wrote to Mr. Lowell, at Cambridge, declining an invita- 
tion : — 

The Wayside, Concord, July 23, 1861. 

Dear Lowell : — I am to start, in two or three days, on 

an excursion with , who has something the matter with him, 

and seems to need sea-air and change. If I alone were con- 
cerned, .... I would most gladly put off my trip till after 
your dinner ; but, as the case stands, I am compelled to decliue. 

Speaking of dinner, last evening's news will dull the edge of 
many a Northern appetite ; but if it puts all of us into the 
same grim and bloody humor that it does me, the South had 
better have suffered ten defeats than won this victory. 

Sincerely yours, 

Nath. Hawthorne. 

And to another friend, in October : — 

" For my part, I don't hope (nor, indeed, wish) to see the 
Union restored as it was ; amputation seems to me much the 
better plan I would tight to the death for the North- 
ern slave States, and let the rest go I have not found 

it possible to occupy my mind with its usual trash and iiou- 



RESUMES WORK. 271 

sense during these anxious times ; but as the autumn advances, 
I find myself sitting down at my desk and blotting successive 
sheets of paper as of yore." 

He had now begun, I suppose, the " Romance of ' 
Immortality," or " Septimius Felton," which has been 
posthumously printed, but had been abandoned by him 
for another treatment of the same theme, called " The 
DoUiver Romance." This last, of wliich two cliapters 
appeared, was left unfinished at his deatli. Of " Sep- 
timius " I shall not attempt an analysis : it contains sev- 
eral related and concentric circles of meaning, to survey 
wiiich would require too much space. The subject had 
been one of the earliest themes of meditation with Haw- 
thorne, and he wrote as with a fountain-pen in which 
was locked the fluid thought of a lifetime. One of the 
less obvious aspects of the book is the typification in 
Septimius's case of that endless struggle which is the 
lot of every man inspired by an ideal aim. The poet 
and the painter are, equally with Septimius, seekers 
after immortality, though of a more ethereal kind ; and 
his morbidness and exaggeration serve to excite in us 
a tenderness and pity over him, assisting the reception 
of truth. These relate mainly to the temptation of the 
artist to effect a severance of ordinary, active human rela- 
tions. (Sad to think what bitter cause the author had to 
brood upon this, the fault attributed to himself!) Tlie 
poet, the creator in whatever art, must maintain his own 
circle of serene air, shutting out from it the flat reverber- 
ations of common life; but if he fail to live generously 
toward his fellows, — if he cannot make the light of 
every day supply the nimbus in which he hopes to 
appear shining to posterity, — then he will fall into the 
treacherous pit of selfishness where Septimius's soul lies 
smothered. But this set of meanings runs imperceptibly 



272 SYMBOLISM OF " SEPTIMIUS." 

into others, for the book is much like tlie cabalistic man- 
uscript described in its pages : now it is blurred over 
with deceptive sameness, and again it brims with multi- 
farious beauties like those that swim within the golden 
depth of Tieck's enchanted goblet. The ultimate and 
most insistent moral is perhaps that which brings it into 
comparison with Goethe's " Paust " ; this, namely, that, 
in order to defraud Nature of lier dues, we must enter 
into compact with the Devil. Both Eaust and Septim- 
ius study magic in their separate ways, with the hope of 
securing results denied to tlieir kind by a common des- 
tiny ; but Eaust proves infinitely tlie meaner of the two, 
since he desires only to restore his youth, that he may 
engage in the mere mad joy of a lusty existence for a few 
years, while Septimius seeks some mode, however austere 
and cheerless, of prolonging his life through centuries 
of world-wide beneficence. Yet the satanically refined 
egoism which lays hold of Septimius is the same spirit 
incarnated in Goethe's Mephistopheles, — der Geist der 
stets verneint. To Eaust he denies the existence of good 
in anything, primarily the good of that universal knowl- 
edge to the acquisition of which he has devoted his life, 
but through this scepticism mining his faith in all be- 
sides. To Septimius he denies the worth of so brief a 
life as ours, and the good of living to whatever end 
seems for the hour most needful and noble. Septimius 
might perhaps be described as Eaust at an earlier stage 
of development than that in which Goethe represents 
him.* 

* Indeed, these words, npplied by Mephistopheles to Faust, 
suit Septimius equally well : — 

" Ihm hat das Schicksal einen Geist gegeben 
I)er ungebandigt inuner vorvvarts dringht 
Und dessen iibereiltes Streben 
Der Erde Freudeu iibersiJiingt." 



"SEPTIMIUS" AND I'AUST. 273 

As a furtlier point of resemblance between the two 
cases, it may be noticed that the false dreams of both are 
dispelled by the exorcising touch of a woman. Both 
have fallen into error througli perceiving only half of the 
truth which has hovered glimmering before them ; these 
errors originate in the exclusively masculine mood, the 
asceticism, which has prevailed in their minds. It will 
be observed that, in the first relation of Rose to Sep- 
timius, Hawthorne takes pains to contrast with this 
mood, delicately but strongly, the woman's gentle conser- 
vatism and wisely practical tendency to be satisfied with 
life, which make her influence so admirable a poising 
force to man. The subsequent alteration of the situa- 
tion, by which he makes her the half-sister of his hero, 
is owing, as Mr. Higginson has pointed out, to the fact 
"that a heroine must be supplied who corresponds to the 
idea in the lover's soul ; like Helena in the second part 
of Faust." * 

But there is a suitable difference between the work- 
ing of the womanly element in " Eaust " and in Haw- 
thorne's romance. In the former instance it is through 

* A i)hase of character rich in interest, but which I can only 
mention, in passing, is presented in the person of Sybil Dacy, 
who here occupies very much the same place, in some regards, 
as Roger Chillingworth in " The Scarlet Letter." The move- 
ment of the story largely depends on a subtle scheme of revenge 
undertaken by her, as that of " The Scarlet Letter " hangs upon 
the mode of retribution sought by the physician ; but her malice 
is directed, characteristically, against the slayer of the young 
officer who had despoiled her of her honor, and, again charac- 
teristically, she is unable to consummate her plan, from the very 
tenderness of her feminine heart, which leads her first to half 
sympathize with his dreams, then pity him for the deceit she 
practised on him, and at last to rather love than hate him. 
l2* K 



274 DIFFERENCES. 

the gratification of his iuferual desire that the liero is 
awakened from his trance of error and. restored to re- 
morse; while Septimius's failure to accomplish his in- 
tended destiny appears to be owing to the inability of his 
aspiring nature to accommodate itself to that code of 
"moral dietetics" which is to assist his strange project. 
" Kiss no woman if her li})S be red ; look not upon her 
if she be very fair," is the maxim taught him. " If thou 
love lier, all is over, and thy whole past and remaining 
labor and pains will be in vain." How patlietic a situa- 
tion this, how much more terrible than that of Eaust, 
when he has reached the turning-point in his career ! A 
nature which could accept an earthly immortality on these 
terms, for the sake of liis fellows, must indeed have been 
a hard and chilly one. But there is still too much of the 
heart in it, to admit of being satisfied with so cruel an 
abstraction. On the verge of success, as he supposes, 
with the long-sought drink standing ready for his lips, 
Septimius nevertheless seeks a companion. Half una- 
wares, he has fallen in love with Sybil, and thenceforth, 
though in a way he had not anticipated, " all is over." 
Yet, saved from death by the poison in which he had 
hoped to find the spring of endless life, his fate appears 
admirably fitting. There is no picture of Mephisto hur- 
rying him off to an apparently irrevocable doom. The 
wrongs he has committed against himself, his friends, 
humanity, — these, indeed, remain, and are remembered. 
He has undoubtedly fallen from his first purity and ear- 
nestness, and must hereafter be content to live a life of 
mere conventional comfort, full of mere conventional 
goodness, conventional charities, in that substantial Eng- 
lish home of his. Could anything be more perfectly 
compensatory ? 

Nothuig is more noticeable than the way in which, 



ILLUSION OF IMMORTALITY. 275 

wliile so many symbolisms spring up out of the story, 
the hero's half-crazed and bewildered atmosphere is the 
one which we really accept, until the reading is ended. 
By this means we are enabled to live through the whole 
immortal future wliich he projects for himself, though he 
never in reality achieves any of it. Tiiis forciug of the 
infinite into the finite, we are again indebted to Mr. Hig- 
ginson for emphasizing as " one of the very greatest tri- 
umphs in all literature." " A hundred separate trage- 
dies," lie says, " would be easier to depict than this which 
combines so many in one." 

But notice the growth of the romance in Hawthorne's 
mind, " Dr. Heidegger's Experiment," in which several 
people are restored to youth for an hour by a life-elixir, 
was published before 1837. In 1840 we have this en- 
try in the journal : " If a man were sure of living forever 
here, he would not care about his offspring." A few 
years afterward, in " A Virtuoso's Collection," the elixir 
vitse is introduced, " in an antique sepulchral urn," but 
the narrator refuses to quaff it. " ' No ; I desire not an 
earthly immortality,' said I. ' Were man to live longer 

on the earth, the spiritual would die out of him 

There is a celestial something within us, that requires, 
after a certain time, the atmosphere of heaven to preserve 
it from ruin,' " But the revolt against death, and then 
the reactionary meditation upon it, and final reverence 
for it, must, from the circumstances of his youngest years, 
have been very early familiar to Hawthorne ; and in the 
course of these meditations, the conception of deathless- 
ness must often have floated before him. The tradition 
as to the former owner of the Wayside, who had thought 
he should never die (alluded to in the letter to Curtis, 
iu 1852*), brought it definitely home to bim. He had 
* See ante, p. 244. 



276 OIIIGIN OF THE STOEY. 

in 1837 tlionglit of this : " A person to spend all his life 
and splendid talents, in trying to achieve something to- 
tally impossible, — as, to make a conquest over nature " ; 
but the knowledge of an actual person who had expected 
to live forever gave the scattered elements coherence. 
The way in which other suggestions came into the plan 
is exceediugly curious. The idea of a bloody footstep 
appears in the Note-Books in 1850 : "Tiie print in blood 
of a naked foot to be traced through the street of a town," 
By a singular corroboration, he encountered five years 
afterward in England an actual bloody footprint, or a 
mark held to be such, at Smithell's Hall in Lancashire. 
(" Englisli Note-Books," Vol. I. April 7, and August 25, 
1855.) The parting request of his hostess there was that 
he " should write a ghost-story for lier house," and he 
observes that "the legend is a good one." Only' five 
days after first hearing it he makes a note thus : " In ray 
Romance, the original emigrant to America may have 
carried away witli him a family secret, by which it was in 
his power, luid he so chosen, to have brought about the 
ruin of the family. This secret he transmitted to liis 
American progeny, by whom it is inheiited throughout 
all the intermediate generations. At last the hero of my 
Romance comes to England, and finds that, by means of 
this secret, he still has it in his power to procure the 
downfall of 11 le family." This clearly refers to something 
already rapidly taking shape in his mind, and recalls at 
once the antique cliest containing family papers, and the 
estate in England waiting for an heir, of " Septimius." 
Could he have already connected the two things, the 
bloody footstep and this Anglo-American interest ? The 
next piece of history comes in the shape of a manuscript 
book in journal form, written in 1858, after Hawihorne 
hud left the consulate, and containing what must have 



THE BLOODY FOOTSTEP. 277 

been the earliest sketch of the story, as he then conceived 
it. It begins abruptly, and proceeds uncertainly, at the 
rate of a few pages each day, for about a month. De- 
tached passages of narration alternate with abstracts of 
the proposed plot, and analysis of the characters. The 
chief interest seems to lie in the project which a young 
American has formed, during a visit to England, of tra- 
cing out and proving his inherited right to an old manor- 
house formerly the property of his ancestors. This old 
hall possesses the peculiarity of the bloody footstep, and 
with this some mystery is connected, which the writer 
himself does not yet seem to have discovered. He takes 
a characteristic pleasure in waiting for this suggestive 
footstep to track the lurking interest of his story to its 
lair, and lingers on the threshold of the tale, gazing upon 
it, indulging himself with that tantalizing pleasure of 
vague anticipation in which he hopes to envelop the good 
reader. The perusal of this singular journal, in which 
the transactions recorded are but day-dreams, is absorb- 
ing beyond description. But though at times he seems 
to be rapidly approaching the heart of the story, yet at 
every point the subtle darkness and coming terror of the 
theme seem to bafEe the author, and he retires, to await 
a more favorable moment. At its conclusion, though he 
appears now to have formed a clear picture enough of 
what his persons are to do, there is still wanting the un- 
derlying thought, which he at moments dimly feels but 
cannot bring to light, and without which he is unable to 
fuse the materials into readiness for the mould. 

Our only information as to the course of the story 
between April, 1858, and the time of writing " Septim- 
ius," must be gathered from a sketch found among the 
author's papers, the date of which it is not possible to 
determine with precision, though both its matter and 



278 GROWTH OF THE PLOT. 

form indicate tliat it must have been written subse- 
quently to the journal above mentioned. Herein are 
curiously mingled certain features of both " Septimius " 
and the "Dolliver Romance." So far as is consistent 
with tiie essential privacy of the manuscript, I shall give 
a general outline of its contents. It consists of two sec- 
tions, in the st;cond of which a lapse of some years is im- 
plied. In the first of these chapters, for they hardly ex- 
ceed that limit, the most prominent figure is that of a 
singular, morose old man, w^ho inhabits a house overlook- 
ing a New England graveyard. But though his situation 
resembles in this particular that of Grandsir Dolliver, 
his characteristics resemble more those of Dr. Port- 
soaken. He is constantly accompanied, too, by brandy- 
and-water and a cloud-compelling pipe ; and his study, 
like the doctor's chamber in "Septimius," is ^tapestried 
with spider-webs; a particularly virulent spider which 
dangles over his head, as he sits at his writing-desk, 
being made to assume the aspect of a devilish familiar. 
On the other hand, his is a far richer and less debased 
nature than that of Portsoaken. Hawthorne appears 
subsequently to have divided him, straining oif from ihe 
rank sediments which settle into the character of Dr. 
Portsoaken the clear sweetness of good Grandsir Dol- 
liver. This " grim doctor," as he is almost invariably 
styled in the manuscript, seems to have originated in 
Hawthorne's knowledge of a Mr. Kirkup, painter, spirit- 
ualist and antiquarian, of Florence,* who also probably 
stood as a model for Grandsir Dolliver. Not that either 
of these personages is copied from Mr. Kirkup ; but the 
personality and surroundings of this quaint old gentleman 
had some sort of affinity with the author's idea, which 
led him to maintain a certain likeness between him and his 
* French and Italian Note-Books, Vol. II. 



PllELlMINARY SKETCH. 279 

own fictitious persons. As in the case of the Florentine 
antiquary, a little girl dwells in the house of the doctor, 
her chief playmate being, like that of Mr. Kirkup's 
adopted daughter, a very beautiful Persian kitten. 
There is much about her like Pansie, of the " Dolliver " 
fragment, but she is still only dimly brought out. The 
boy is described as of superior nature, but strangely 
addicted to re very. Though his traits are but slightly 
indicated, he suggests in general the character of Sep- 
tlmius, and may very easily have grown into him, at a 
later period. At first he is much neglected by the doc- 
tor, but afterwards, by resolute and manly behavior in 
questionhig his mysterious guardian as to his own origin, 
and the connection subsisting between them, he secures 
greater consideration. The doctor gradually hints to 
him the fact of his descent from an old English family, 
and frequent mention is made of the ancestral hall, 
the threshold of which is stained by the imprint of a 
bloody footstep marking the scene of some dark tragedy, 
which, in the superstitious haze thrown over it by time, 
assumes various and uncertain forms. At different times 
two strangers are introduced, who appear to have some 
obscure knowledge of, and connection with, the ghastly 
footstep; and, finally, a headstone is discovered in the 
neighboring cemetery, marking the spot where an old 
man had been buried many years since, and engraved 
witii the likeness of a foot. The grave has been recently 
opened to admit a new occupant, and the children, in 
playing about it, discover a little silver key, which the 
doctor, so soon as it is shown him, pockets, with the 
declaration that it is of no value. After this, the boy's 
education is taken in hand by his being sent to school ; 
but presently the doctor sickens of life, and character- 
istically resolving to abandon brandy-drinking, and die. 



280 ITS CONCLUSION. 

does so accordingly. Mention has previously been made 
of certain papers wliicli he had kept in a secret place, 
and these the youth now secures. The second part 
describes his advent into England, He soon makes ln"s 
way to the old hall, but just as his connection with it 
and its inmates begins, the manuscript terminates. 

It will be noticed that in this fragment the scene is at 
first laid in New England, whereas the journalized sketch 
opened the drama in England. From tiiis I infer that 
the former was written after the return to this country. 
"The Marble Eaun " appropriated the author's attention, 
after the sketch of 1858 ; and in this, which was proba- 
bly written just before the commencement of the war, he 
liad not yet clearly struck the key-note of the story. 
When he recurred to it, in the autumn of 1801, on be- 
ginning to " blot successive slieets as of yore," it was at 
last witli the definite design of uniting the legend of the 
deathless man with the legend of Smithell's Hall. It is 
as if, having left England, he could no longer write an 
English romance, but must give the book mainly an 
American coloring again. There is a pathetic interest, 
too, in his thus wavering between the tM'o countries, 
wiiich now so nearly equally divided his affections, and 
striving to unite the Wayside with the far-off English 
manor. Under the new design, everything began to fall 
into place. The deathless man was made the hero ; the 
English inheritance became an inferior motive-power, on 
which, however, the romantic action depends ; the family 
papers and the silver key came well to band for the 
elucidation of the plot; the bloody footstep gained a new 
and deep significance ; and a " purple everlasting flower," 
presented in 1854 to Mrs. Hawtiiorne by the gardener of 
Eaton Hall, blossomed out, witii supernatural splendor, 
as a central point in the design. The scene being in 



CHANGE OF PLAN. 281 

Concord, and the time of writing that of war, the Revo- 
lutionary association was natural. But the public phase 
of that epoch could not assume an important place : it was 
sunk into the background, forming merely a lurid field 
on which the figures of this most solemn and terrific of 
all Hawthorne's works stand out in portentous relief. 
One singular result of the historic location, however, is 
the use that was now made of that tradition which 
Lowell had told him at the Old Manse, concerning a boy 
who was cliop[)ing wood on the April morning of the 
famous fight, and found a wounded British soldier on the 
field, whom he killed with his axe. "Oftentimes, as an 
intellectual and moral exercise, I have sought to follow 
that poor youth through his subsequent career, and ob- 
serve how his soul was tortured by the blood-stain 

This one circumstance has borne more fruit for me than 
all that history tells us of the fight." Thus had he 
written, fourteen years before ; and now that sombre 
study furnished him with the psychology of the death- 
scene in the beginning of " Septimius." 

But the romance, even in this form, was again aban- 
doned, as we learn from the prefatory note to Pierce in 
" Our Old Home," written in July, 18G3. He there 
speaks of it as an "abortive project, utterly thrown 
aside," which " will never now be accomplished." In 
November of that year, "The Dolliver Romance" was 
announced for serial publication ; and in the first page 
of the isolated opening scene, published in July, 1864, 
occurs the mention of a certain potent cordial, from 
which the good doctor had received great invigoration, 
and which we may well suppose was destined to tincture 
the whole story. Another point from which a connection 
with " Septimius Felton" may perhaps be traced is the 
passing mention of Graudsir Dolliver's grandson CorneUus, 



282 "the dollivee eomance." 

by whom this cordial had been compounded, he having 
displayed a great efficiency with powerful drugs. Re- 
calling that the author describes many nostruuis as hav- 
ing been attributed to Septiinius, which he had perhaps 
chanced upon in his unsuccessful attempts to distil the 
elixir of life, we may fairly conjecture this posthumous 
character of Cornelius, this mere memory, to be the re- 
mains of Septimius, who, it would seem, was to have been 
buried by the author under the splendid monument of a 
still more highly wrought and more aspiring form of the 
romance. The only remaining portions of this latest form 
have been printed, and are lull of a silvery and resonant 
])romise. Unquestionably it was to have been as much a 
" Romance of Immortality " as " Septimius " ; and the 
exquisite contrast of the child Pansie — who promised to 
be tlie author's most captivating feminine creation — with 
the aged man, would no doubt have given us a theme of 
celestial loveliness, as compared with the forbidding and 
remorseless mournfulness of the preliminary work. In 
the manuscript sketch for " Septimius " there is a note 
referring to a description in the " English Note-Books " 
of two pine-trees at Lowood, on Windermere, " quite 
dead and dry, although they have the aspect of dark, 
rich life. But this is caused by the verdure of two great 
ivy-vines which have twisted round them like gigantic 
snakes,. . . . throttling the life out of them, .... and 
one feels that they have stolen the life that belonged to 
the pines." This does not seem to have been used; but 
the necessity of some life being stolen in order to add to 
any other life more than its share, is an idea that very 
clearly appears in the romance. In " Dolliver " the same 
strain of feeling would probably have reappeared ; but 
it would there perhaps have been beautified, softened, 
expiated by the mutual love of Pansie and the gruudsire ; 



LAST INSPIRATION. '283 

each wishing to live forever, for the other. Even ia 
" Septimius " we can discern Hawthorne standing upon 
tlie wayside hill-top, and, through the turbid medium of 
the unhappy hero, tenderly diffusing the essence of his 
own concludinj? thoughts on art and existence. Like 
Mozart, writing what he felt to be a requiem for his own 
death, like Mozart, too, throwing down the pen in mid- 
most of the melody, leaving the strain unfinished, be 
labors on, prescient of the overhanging doom. Genial 
and tender at times, amidst their sadness, his reveries are 
nevertheless darkened by the shadow of coming death ; 
and it is not nntil the opening of "Tiie Dolliver Ro- 
mance " that the darkness breaks away. Then, indeed, 
we feel once more the dewy freshness of the long-past 
prime, with a radiance unearthly fair, besides, of some new, 
undreamed-of morning. He who has gone down into the 
dark valley appears for a brief space with the light of the 
heavenly city on his countenance. Ah, prophet, who 
spoke but now so sadly, what is this new message that 
we see brightening on your lips ? Will it solve the 
riddle of sin and beauty, at last ? We listen intently ; 
we seem to lean out a little way from earth. 

Only an eddying silence ! And yet the air seems even 
now alive with his last words. 




XI. 



PERSONALITY. 




HAT lias thus far been developed in this essay, 
concerning Hawthorne's personality, though in- 
cidental, has, I hope, served the end in view, - — 
that of suggesting a large, healthy nature, capable of the 
most profound thought and the most graceful and humor- 
ous mental play. The details of his early life already 
given show how soon the inborn honor of his nature be- 
gan to shine. The small irregularities in his college 
course have seemed to me to bring him nearer and 
to endear him, without in any way impairing the dig- 
nity and beauty of character which prevailed in him 
from the beginning. It is good to know that he shared 
the average human history in these harmless peccadil- 
loes ; for they never hurt his integrity, and they are re- 
minders of that old but welcome truth, that the greatest 
men do not need a constant diet of great circumstances. 
He had many difficulties to deal with, as uupicturesque 
and harassing as any we have to encounter in our daily 
courses, — a thing w^iicli people are curiously prone to 
forget in the case of eminent authors. The way in which 
he dealt with these throws back light on himself. We 
discover how well the high qualities of genius were 
matched by those of character. 



VALUE OF ANECDOTES. 285 

Fragmentary anecdotes liave a value, but so relative 
that to attempt to construct tiie subject's character out 
of them is liazardous. Conceptions of a man derived 
only from such matter remind one of Charles Lamb's 
ghosts, formed of the particles which, every seven years, 
are replaced throughout the body by new ones. Like- 
wise, the grossest errors have been committed through 
the assumption that particular passages in Hawtliorne's 
writings apply directly and unqualifiedly to himself. 
There is so nmch imagination interfused with them, that 
only a reverent and careful imagination can apply them 
aright. Nor are private letters to be interpreted in any 
other way than as the talk of the hour, very inadequately 
representative, and often — unless read in many lights — 
positively untrue, to the writer. It gives an entirely false 
notion, for example, to accept as a trait of character this 
modest covering up of a noble sentiment, which occurs 
in a letter refusing to withdraw the dedication of " Our 
Old Home " to Pierce, in the time of the latter's unpop- 
ularity : — 

" Nev^ertheless, I have no fancy for making myself a martyr 
when it is honorably and conscientiously possible to avoid it ; 
and I always mcasui-e out my heroism very accurately according 
to the exigencies of the occasion, and should be the last man in 
the world to throw away a bit of it needlessly." 

Such a passage ought never to have been printed with- 
out some modifying word ; for it has been execrably mis- 
used. "I have often felt," Hawthorne says, "that words 
may be a thick and darksome veil of mystery between the 
soul and the truth which it seeks." What hijustice, 
then, that he should be judged by a literal construction 
of Tvords quickly chosen for the transient embodiment of 
a mood ! 



286 MISTAKEN VIEWS. 

The first and most common opinion about tlic man 
Hawthorne is, that he must have been extremely gloomy, 
because his mind nourished so many grave thoughts and 
solemn fancies. But this merely proves that, as he him- 
self says, when people think he is pouring himself out in 
a tale or an essay, he is merely telling what is common 
to human nature, not what is peculiar to himself. " I 
sympathize with them, not they with me." He sympa- 
ihizes in the special direction of our darker side. A 
creative mind of the higher order holds the thread which 
guides it surely through life's labyrinths ; but all the more 
on this account its attention is called to the erratic move- 
ment of other travellers around it. The genius who has 
the clew begins, therefore, to study these errors and to 
describe them for our behoof. It is a great mistake to 
suppose that the abnormal or preposterous phases which 
he describes are the fruit of sel/siudj, — personal traits 
disguised in fiction ; yet this is what has often been 
affirmed of Hawthorne. We don't think of attributing 
to Dickens the multiform oddities which he pictures with 
such power, it being manifestly absurd to do so. As 
Dickens raises the laugh against them, we at once per- 
ceive that they are outside of himself. Hawthorne is so 
serious, that we are absorbed in the sober earnest of the 
thing, and forget to apply the rule in his case. Dickens's 
distinct aim is to excite us with something uncommon ; 
Hawthorne's, to show us that the elements of all trage- 
dies lie within our individual natures ; therefore we begin 
to attribute in undue measure to /lis individual nature all 
the abnormal conditions that he has shown to be poten- 
tial in any of us. But in truth he was a perfectly healthy 
person. 

" You are, intellectually speaking, quite a puzzle to me," his 
friend Geoige Hillaid wrote to him, once. "How comes it 



HAWTHORNE^S HEALTHINESS. 287 

that, with so thoroughly healthy an organization as you have, 
you have such a taste for the morhid anatomy of the human 
heart, and such a knowledge of it, too ? I should fancy, from 
your books, that you were burdened with some secret sorrow, 
that you had some blue chamber in your soul, into which you 
hardly dared to enter yourself; but when I see you, you give 
me the impression of a man as healthy as Adam in Paradise." 

This very liealtliiness was his qualification for his office. 
By virtue of bis mental integrity and absolute moral 
purity, he was able to handle unhurt all disintegrated and 
sinful forms of character; and when souls in trouble, 
persons with moral doubts to solve and criminals wrote 
to him for counsel, they recognized the healing touch 
of one whose pitying immaculateness could make them 
well. 

She who knew best his habitual tone through a sympa- 
thy such as has rarely been given to any man, who 
lived with him a life so exquisitely fair and high, that to 
speak of it publicly is almost irreverent, has written: — 

" He had the inevitable pensiveness and gravity of a person 
who possessed what a friend has called his ' awful i)ower of in- 
sight ' ; but his mood was always cheerful and equal, and his 
mind peculiai'ly healthful, and the airy splendor of his wit and 
humor was the light of his home. He saw too far to be de- 
spondent, though his vivid sympathies and shaping imagination 
often made him sad in behalf of others. He also perceived 
morbidness wherever it existed instantly, as if by the illumina- 
tion of his own steady cheer." 

His closest friends, too, speak with delight of his gen- 
ial warmth and ease in converse with them. He could 
seldom talk freely Avith more than two or three, however, 
on account of his constitutional shyness, and perhaps of 
a peculiarly concentrative cast of mind ; though lie pos- 



288 HIS CONVERSATION. 

sessecl a ready adaptability. "I talk with everybody; 

to Mrs. T good sense ; to Mary, good sense, with 

a mixture of fun; to Mrs. G , sentiment, romance, 

and nonsense." * A gentleman M^ho was with him at 
Brook Earm, and knew him well, tells me that his pres- 
ence was very attractive, and that he inspired great 
esteem among all at the farm by his personal qualities. 
On a walking trip to Wachusett, which they once made 
together, Hawthorne showed a great interest in sitting 
in the bar-rooms of country taverns, to listen to the talk 
of the attendant farmers and villagers. The manner in 
which he was approached had a great deal'to do with his 
response. If treated simply and wisely, he would an- 
swer cordially ; but he was entirely dismayed, as a rule, 
by those who made demonstrations of admiration or awe. 
" Why do they treat me so ? " he asked a friend, in one 
case of this sort. " Why, they 're afraid of you." " But 
I tremble at themT he said. " They think," she ex- 
plained, "that you're imagining all sorts of terrible 
things." " Heavens ! " he ansAvered ; " if they only knew 
what I do think about." At one time, when he was visiting 
this same friend, he was obliged to return some calls, and 
his companion in the midst of conversation left him to 
continue it. He had previously asked his hostess, in as- 
sumed terror, what he should talk about, and she advised 
"climate." Accordingly, he turned to the naval offi- 
cer whom he was calling upon, and asked him if he had 
ever been to the Sandwich Islandjs. " The man started," 
he said, on returning, " as if he had been struck. He 
had evidently been there and committed some terrible 
crime, which my allusion recalled. I had made a fright- 
ful mess of it. B led me away to the door." This 

* American Note -Books, 1837. 



CURTIS'S MEMORY-PICTURE. 289 

woful account was, of course, au imaginary and symbolical 
representation of the terrors which enforced conversation 
caused him ; the good officer's surprise at the abrupt in- 
troduction of a new subject had supplied him with the 
ludicrous suggestion. Mr. Curtis has given an account 
of his demeanor on another occasion : — 

"1 had driven up with some friends to an sesthetic tea at 
Mr. Emerson's. It was in the winter, and a great wood-fire 
blazed upon the hospitable hearth. There were various men and 
women of note assembled ; and I, who listened attentively to all 
the fine things that were said, was for some time scarcely aware 
of a man who sat upon the edge of the circle, a little with- 
drawn, his head slightly thrown forward upon his breast, and 
his black eyes [' black ' is an error] clearly burning under his 
black brow. As I drifted down the stream of talk, this person, 
who sat silent as a shadow, looked to me as Webster might 
have looked had he been a poet, — a kind of poetic Webster. 
He I'ose and walked to the window, and stood there quietly for 
a long time, watching the dead-white landscape. No appeal 
was made to him, nobody looked after him ; the conversation 
flowed steadily on, as if every one und3rstood that his silence 
was to be respected. It was the same thin^: at table. In vain 
the silent man imbibed aesthetic tea. Whatever fancies it in- 
spired did not flow^er at his lips. But there was a light in his 
eye which assured me nothing was lost. So supreme was his 
silence, that it presently engrossed me, to the exclusion of every- 
thing else. There was very brilliant discourse, but this silence 
was much more poetic and fascinating. Fine things were said 
by the philosophers, but much finer things were implied by the 
dumbness of this gentleman with heavy brows and black hair. 
When he presently rose and went, Emerson, with the ' slow, 
wise smile' that breaks over his face like day over the sky, 
said, ' Hawthorne rides well his horse of the night,' " 

He was not a lover of argumentation. " His principle 



290 HAWTHORNE»S ATMOSPHEEE. 

seemed to be, if a man caunot understand without talk^ 
ing to him, it is useless to talk, because it is immaterial 
whether such a man understands or not." And the same 
writer says : — 

" His own sympathy was so broad and sure, that, although 
nothing had been said for hours, his companion knew that not A 
thiug had escaped his eye, nor a single pulse of beauty in the 
day, or scene, or society, failed to thriU his heart. In this way 
his silence was most social. Everything seemed to have been 
said." 

I am told that in bis own home, though be was often 
silent, it was never with sadness except in seasons of 
great illness in the house, the prevailing effect of his man- 
ner being usually that of a cheerful and almost humorous 
calm. Mr. Curtis gives perhaps one of the best descrip- 
tions of his aspect, when he speaks of his "glimmering 
smile " ; and of his atmosphere, when he says that at 
Emerson's house it seemed always morning, but at 
Hawthorne's you passed into 

" A land in which it seemed always afternoon." 

Hawthorne's personal appearance is said by those who 
knew him to have been always very impressive. He was 
tall and strongly built, with beautiful and lustrous gray- 
blue eyes, and luxuriant dark brown hair of great soft- 
ness, which grew far back from his forehead, as in the 
early engraved portrait of him. His skin had a peculiar 
fineness and delicacy, giving unusual softness to his 
complexion. After his Italian sojourn he altered much, 
his hair having begun to whiten, and a thick dark nnis- 
taclie being permitted to grow, so that a wit described 
him as looking like a " boned pirate." When it be- 
came imperative to shake off his reticence, he seems 
to have had the power of impressing as much by 



COXSIDERATENESS. 291 

speecli as lie had before done bj silence. It was the 
same abundant, ardent, but self-contained and perfectly 
balanced nature that informed either phase. How com- 
manding was this nature may be judged from the fact 
related of him by an acquaintance, that rude people jost- 
ling him in a crowd would give way at once "at the 
sound of his low and almost irresolute voice." The 
occasions on which he gave full vent to his indignation at 
anything were very rare ; but when these came, he mani- 
fested a strength of sway only to be described as regal. 
Without the least violence, he brought a searching stern- 
ness to bear that was utterly overwhelming, carrying as 
it did the weight of perfect self-control. Something even 
of the eloquent gift of old Colonel Hathorne seemed to be 
locked within him, like a precious heirloom rarely shown ; 
for in England, where his position called for speech-mak- 
ing, he acquitted himself with brilliant honor. But the 
effort which this compelled was no doubt quite commen- 
surate with the success. He never shrank, notwithstand- 
ing, from effort, when obligation to others put in a 
plea. A member of his family has told me that, when 
talking to any one not congenial to him, the effect of the 
contact was so strong as to cause an almost physical con- 
traction of his whole stalwart frame, though so slight as 
to be perceptible only to eyes that knew his habitual and 
informal aspects; yet he would have sunk through the 
floor rather than betray his sensations to the person caus- 
ing them. Mr. Curtis, too, records the amusement with 
which he watched Hawthorne paddling on the Concord 
River with a friend whose want of skill caused the boat 
continually to veer the wrong way, and the silent gener- 
osity with which he put forth his whole strength to neu- 
tralize the error, rather than mortify his companion by 
an explanation. His eonsiderateness was always delicate 



292 SIMPLICITY OF HABITS. 

and alert, and lias left in his family a reverence for quali- 
ties that have certainly never been surpassed and not 
often equalled iu sweetness. 

He was simple in his habits, and fond of being out of 
doors, but not — after his college days — as a sportsman. 
While living beside the Concord, he rowed frequently, 
with a dreamy devotion to the pastime, and was fond of 
fishing ; swimming, too, he enjoyed. But his chief ex- 
ercise was walking ; he had a vast capacity for it, and 
was, I think, never even seen upon horseback. At Brook 
Farm he " belabored the rugged furrows " with a will ; 
and at the Old Manse he presided over his garden in 
a paradisiacal sort of way. Books in every form he was 
always eager for, sometimes, as has been reported, satis- 
fying himself with an old almanac or newspaper, over 
which he would brood as deeply as over richly stored 
volumes of classic literature. At other times he was 
fastidious in his choice, and threw aside many books be- 
fore he found the right one for the hour.* An impres- 
sion has been set afloat that he cared nothing for books 
in themselves, but this is incorrect. He never had the 

* He would attach himself to a book or a poem apparently 
by some law perceptible only to himself, perhaps often giving 
an interest by his own genius. A poem On Solitude, in Diy- 
den's Miscellany, was at one time a special favorite with him. 

It begins : — 

" Solitude, my sweetest choice. 
Places devoted to the Kight, 
Remote from Tumult and fi'om Noise, 
How you my restless thoughts delight ! " 

And the last stanza has these lines : — 

" 0, how I solitude adore, 

That element of noblest wit, 
Where I have learned Apollo's ](ire. 
Without tlie pains to study it." 



LOVE OF BOOKS. 293 

means to accumulate a library of any size, but lie had a 
passion for books. 

" There yet lingers with me a superstitious reverence for lit- 
erature of all kinds," he writes in " The Old Manse." " A 
bound volume has a charm in my eyes similar to what scraps 
of manuscript possess for the good Mussulman ; . . . . every 
new book or antique one may contain the 'open sesame,' — the 
spell to disclose treasures hidden in some unsuspected cave of 
Truth." 

When he lived at the Wayside, and would occasion- 
ally bring borne a small package of books from Boston, 
these furnished him fresh pleasure for many days. He 
would carry some favorite of them with him everywhere, 
from room to room or to his hill-top. He was, as we 
have seen, a cordial admirer of other writers, seldom vex- 
ing himself with a critical review of their merits and de- 
fects, but applying to them instead the test of his own 
catholic capacity for enjoyment. The deliberate tone in 
which he judges liis own works, in his letters, shows how 
little his mind was impressed by the greatness of their 
fame and of the genius found in them. There could not 
have Keen a more modest author, though he did not weakly 
underrate his work. "Uecognition," he once said to Mr. 
Howells, " makes a man very modest." 

An attempt has also been made to show that he had 
little interest in animals, partly based, ludicrous as it 
may seem, on his bringing them into only one of his 
books. In his American journals, however, there is abun- 
dant evidence of his acute sympathy in this direction; at 
the Old Manse he fried fish for his dog Leo, when he 
says he should not have done it for himself; and in the 
Trosachs he finds a moment for pitying some little lambs 
startled by the approach of his party.* I have already 

* English Note-Books (May, 1856). 



294 SENSIBILITY TO NATURE. 

mentioned his fondness for cats. It Las further been 
said that he did not enjoy wild nature, because in tlie 
" Enghsh Note-Books " there is no outgushing of ecstatic 
description. But in fact he had the keenest enjoyment 
of it. He could not enter into the spectacle when hurry- 
ing through strange regions. Among the English lakes 
he writes : — 

"To say the truth, I was weary of fine scenery, and it 
seemed to me that I had eaten a score of mountains and 
quaffed as many lakes, all in the space of two or three days, 
and the natural consequence was a surfeit. 

" I doubt if anybody ever does really see a mountain, who 
goes for the set and sole purpose of seeing it. Nature will not 
let herself be seen in such cases. You must patiently bide her 
time; and by and by, at some jinforeseen moment, she will 
quietly and suddenly unveil herself and for a brief space allow 
you to look right into the heart of her mystery. But if you 
call out to her peremptorily, ' Nature ! unveil yourself this very 
moment ! ' she only draws her veil the closer ; and you may 
look with all your eyes, and imagine that you see all that she 
can show, and yet see nothing." 

But this was because his sensibility was so great that 
lie drew from little things a larger pleasure than many 
feel when excited by grand ones ; and knowing this 
deeper phase, he conld not be content with the hasty ad- 
miration on which tourists flatter themselves. The beauty 
of a scene which he could absorb in peace was never lost 
upon him. Every year the recurrent changes of season 
filled him with untold pleasure ; and in the spring, Mrs. 
Hawthorne has been heard to say, he would walk with 
her in continuous silence, his heart full of the awe and 
delight with which the miracle of buds and new verdure 
inspired him. Nothing could be more accurate or sensi- 



LEISURE AND ABSORPTION". 295 

tive than the brief descriptions of nature in his works. 
But there is nothing sentimental about them ; partly 
owing to the Anglo-Saxon instinct which caused him to 
seek precise and detailed statement first of all, and partly 
because of a certain classic, awe-inspired reserve, like that 
of Horace and Virgil. 

There was a commendable indolence in his character. 
It was not a constitutional weakness, overcoming will, 
but the instinctive precaution of a man wliose errand it 
was to rise to great emergencies of exertion. He always 
waited for an adequate mood, before writing. But these 
intervals, of course, were richly productive of re very 
which afterward entered into the creative moments. 
He would sometimes become deeply abstracted in im- 
agination ; and M^ule he was writing " The Scarlet Let- 
ter " it is related by a trustworthy person that, sitting 
in the room where his wife was doing son)e sewing, lie 
unconsciously took up a part of the work and cut it into 
minute fragments with the scissors, without being aware 
that he had done so. At some previous time, he had in 
the same way 'gradually chipped off with a knife portions 
of a table, until the entire folding-leaf was worn away 
by the process. The opinion was sometimes advanced 
by him that without a certain mixture of uncongenial 
labor he might not have done so much with the pen ; 
but in this he perhaps underestimated the leisure in his 
blood, which was one of the elements of his power. Men 
of smaller calibre are hollowed out by the fire of ideas, 
and decay too quickly; but this trait preserved him from 
such a fate. Combined with his far-reaching foresight, 
it may have had something to do with his compara- 
tive withdrawal from practical affairs other than those 
which necessity connected him with. Of Holgrave he 
writes : — 



296 A GREAT BELIEVER. 

" His error lay in supposing that this age more than any 
past or future one is destined to see the garments of antiquity 
exchanged for a new suit, instead of gradually j-enewing them- 
selves hy patchwork ; . . . . and more than all, in fancying that 
it mattered anything to the great end in view whether he him- 
self should contend for it or against it." 

The implied opinion of the author, here, is not that of 
a fatalist, but of an optimist (if we must connect him 
with any "ism ") who has a very profound faith in Prov- 
idence ; not in any " special providence," but in that 
operation of divine laws through unexpected agencies 
and conflicting events, which is very gradually approxi- 
mating human affairs to' a state of truthfulness. Haw- 
thorne was one of the great believers of his generation; 
but his faith expressed itself in the negative way of show- 
ing how fragile are the ordinary objects of reverence 
in the world, how subject the best of us are to the 
undermining influence of very great sin ; and, on the 
other hand, how many traits of good there are, by con- 
sequence, even in the worst of us. This, however, is a 
mere skeleton statement : the noblest element in his 
mood is that he believes with his heart. A good inter- 
preter has said that he feeh with his hraiyi, and thinks 
with his heart, to show the completeness with which 
he miuirled the two elements in his meditations on 
existence. A warm, pure, living sympathy pervaded 
all his analysis of mankind, without which that analysis 
M'ould have taken no hold upon us. It is a crude view 
which reckons him to have been wanting in moral en- 
thusiasm : he liad not that kind which can crush out 
sympathy with suffering, for the sake of carrying out 
an idea. Perhaps in some cases this was a fault ; but 
one cannot dwell on the mistaken side of such a phase, 
when it possesses another side so full of beneficent aid 



MORAL ENTHUSIASM. 297 

to liumauitj. And it must be remembered that "with all 
this susceptibility, he "was not a suffering poet, like Shelley, 
but distinctly an endurer. His moral enthusiasm was 
deeper than that of any scheme or system. 

His distaste for society has been declared to proceed 
from tlie fact that, when he once became interested in 
people, he could no longer chemically resolve them into 
material for romance. But this assumption is also erro- 
neous ; for Ha'wthonie, if he felt it needful, could bring 
to bear upon his best friends the same qualitative meas- 
uring skill that he exercised on any one. 1 do not doubt 
that he knew "where to place his friends and acquaintance 
in the scale of relative excellence. All of us "who have 
not an equal analytic power "with bis own can at least 
reverence his discretion so far as to believe that he had 
stand-points not open to every one, from "which he took 
views often more essentially just than if he had assumed 
a more s"w^eeping estimate. In other cases, "where he be- 
sto"wed more friendship and confidence than the object of 
them especially deserved, he no doubt sought the simple 
pleasure of accepting what circumstances offered him. 
He was not a suspicious person ; although, in fear of 
being fooled by his fancy, he cultivated what he often 
spoke of to a friend as " morose common-sense," deem- 
ing it a desirable alloy. There was even, in many rela- 
tions, an unquestioning trust on his part; for he might 
well be called 

"As the greatest only are, 
In his simplicity sublime." 

The connection between Pierce and himself involved 
too many considerations to make it possible to pass 
them with indifference ; and he perhaps condemned cer- 
tain public acts of the President, while feeling it to be 
utter disloyalty to an old friend to discuss these mis- 



298 DIFFICULTY OF DEFINITION. 

takes with any one. As to other slighter connections, it 
is very likely he did not take the trouble that might have 
saved him from being imposed upon. 

But it is impossible to define Hawthorne's personality 
precisely. A poet's whole effort is to indirectly express 
tliis, by expressing the effect of things upon him; and 
we may read much of Hawthorne in his books, if we 
have the skill. But it is very clear that he put only a 
part of himself into them; tliat part which best served 
the inexorable law of his genius for treating life in a given 
light. Eor the rest, his two chapters on "The Custom- 
House" and "The Old Manse" show us something of 
his mode of taking daily affairs. But his real and inmost 
cliaracter was a mystery even to himself, and this, be- 
cause he felt so profoundly the impossibility of sounding 
to the bottom any human heart. " A cloudy veil stretches 
over the abyss of my nature," he writes, at one time. 
"I have, however, no love of secrecy or darkness." At 
another time: "Lights and shadows are continually flit- 
ting across my inward sky, and I know neither whence 
they come nor whither they go ; nor do I look too closely 
into them." A mind so conscious as his of the slight 
reality of appearances would he dissatisfied with the few 
tangible qualities which are all of himself that a mRn can 
discern : at the same time he would hesitate to probe the 
deeper self assiduously, for fear of turning his searching 
gaze too intently within, and tlms becoming morbid. In 
other persons, however, he could perceive a contour, and 
pursue his study of investigation from without inward, 
— a more healthy method. His instincfAve knowledge 
of himself, hemg brought into play, would of course aid 
him. Incidentally, then, something of himself comes to 
liglit in liis investigation of others. And it is perhaps 
this iuabihty to define their own natures, except by a 



SELF-EXPRESSION. 299 

roundabout method, wliicli is the creative impulse of all 
great novelists and dramatists. "I doubt whether many 
of the famous delineators of character could give us a 
very distinct account of their own individualities ; and 
if they did, it would probably make them out the most 
uninteresting of beings. It would certainly be divested 
of the special charm of their other writing. Imagine 
Dickens clearly accounting for himself and his peculiar 
traits : wonld he be able to excite even a smile ? How 
much of his own delicious personality could Thackeray 
liave described without losing the zest of his other por- 
traitures ? Ha wt home has given a kind of picture of 
himself in Coverdale, and was sometimes called after that 
ciiaracter by his friends ; but I suspect he has adroitly 
constructed Coverdale out of the appearance which he 
knew himself to make in the eyes of associates. I 
do not mean that Hawthorne had not a very decisive 
personality; for indeed he had. But the essence of 
the person cannot be compressed into a few brief para- 
graphs, and must be slowly drawn in as a pervasive 
elixir from his works, his letters, his note-books. In the 
latter he has given as much definition of his interior self 
as we are likely to get, for no one else can continue the 
broken jottings that he has left, and extend them into 
outlines. We shall not greatly err if we treat the hidden 
depths of his spirit with as much reverence as he himself 
used in scrutinizing them. Curiously enough, many of 
those who have studied this most careful and delicate of 
definers have embraced the madness of attempting to 
bind him down in unhesitating, absolute statements. 
He who mastered words so completely that he learned to 
despise their obscurity, has been made the victim of easy 
epithets and a few conventional phrases. But none can 
ever be said to know Hawthorne who do not leave large 
allowances for the unknowable. 



XII. 



POE, IRVING, HAWTHORNE. 



|l^-^i|p1li|HE names of Poe, Irviug, and Hawthorne have 
^^■O been so often connected witliout due discrimina- 
gr'^¥^l tion, that it is imperative to consider here the 
actual relation between j;lie three men. Inquiry might 
naturally be roused by the circumstance that, although 
Hawthorne has freely been likened to Irving in some 
quarters, and in others to Poe, the latter two are never 
supposed to hold anything in common. Indeed, they 
might aptly be cited in illustration of the widely opposed 
tendencies already developed in our brief national lit- 
erature. Two things equal to the same thing are equal 
to each other ; and if Poe and Irviug were each equal to 
Hawthorne, there would be some similarity between 
them. But it is evident that they are not like quantities; 
and we must conclude that they have been unconsciously 
used by critics, in trying to find a unit of measure to 
gauge the greatest of the triad with. 

Undoubtedly there are resemblances in Hawthorne to 
both Poe and Irving. Hawthorne and Irving represent 
a dignity and roundedness of diction which is one of the 
old-fashioned merits in English writing ; and because 
they especially, among eminent authors of the century, 



SOME SIxMlLARITIES. 301 

Jiave stood for this quality, tliey have been supposed to 
stand close tof^ether. ]5ut Irving's speech is not so much 
an organic part of his genius as a preconceived method of 
expression "vvhich has a considerable share in modifying 
his thought. It is rather a manner than a style. Ou the 
other hand, it Avould be hard to find a style growing so 
naturally and strongly out of elemental attributes as 
Hawthorne's, so deftly waiting upon the slightest move- 
ment of idea, at once disclosing and lightly veiling the 
informing thouglit, — like the most dehcate sculptured 
marble draj)ery. The radical differences of the two men 
were also obscured in the beginning by the fact that 
Hawthorne did not for some time exhibit that massive 
power of hewing out individual character which after- 
ward had full swing in his romances, and by a certain 
kinship of fancy in his lighter efforts, wilh Irving's. 
"The Art of Book-Making" and "The Mutability' of 
Literature" are not far removed from some of Haw- 
thorne's conceits. And " The Vision of the fountain " 
and " The Village Uncle " might have issued in their 
soft meditativeuess from Geoffrey Crayon's own repertory, 
except that they are moulded with a so much more sub- 
tile art than his, and with an instinct of proportion so 
much more sure. But even in the earlier tales, taken 
all together, Hawthorne ranks higher than Irving in the 
heraldry of genius : he has more quarterings in his shield. 
Not only does he excel the other in brief essay, depend- 
ing only on endogenous forces, whereas Irving is always 
adorning his paragraphs with that herb-o'-grace, quota- 
tion, but he also greatly surpasses him in the construc- 
tion of his stories ; and finally, his psychological analysis 
and symbolic imagination place him beyond rivalry. It 
is a brilliant instance of the more ideal mind asserting its 
commanding power, by admirable achievements in the in- 



S02 GIIOUNDS OF COMPARISON. 

ferior styles, — so that even in those lie was at once 
ranked with the most famous practiser of them, — and 
then quietly reaching out and grasping a higher order of 
truths, which no one had even thought of competing for. 
I suppose it is not assumed for a moment that " Wolfert's 
Roost," the " Tales of a Traveller," the story of " Rip 
Van Winkle," the " Legend of Sleepy Hollow," and the 
])icturesque but evanescent tales of "The Alhambra" 
can be brought into discussion on the same terms with 
Hawthorne's romances, as works of art; and they as- 
suredly cannot be as studies of cliaracter, for of this 
they have next to nothing. The only phases of char- 
acter which Irving has any success in dealing with are 
those of credulity and prejudice. Tiie legendary ten- 
dency of the two men has perhaps confused some readers. 
Both were lovers of association, and turned naturally 
to the past for materials : the New-Yorker found de- 
lightful sources of tradition or of ludicrous invention 
in the past of that city, where his family lield a long- 
established and estimable footing ; and the New-Eug- 
lander, as we have seen, drew also through the channel 
of descent from the dark tarn of Puritan experience. 
But Irving turned his back upon everything else when 
he entered the tapestried chamber of the past, while 
Hawthorne sought that vantage-ground only to secure a 
more impressive view of humanity. There is one gift of 
Irving's which won liini an easier as well as a wider 
triumph than that which awaited Hawthorne; and this 
is his ability to take the simple story-teller's tone, devoid 
of double meanings. Poe, also, had th& passion for 
narrative in and for itself, but in him it was disturbed by 
a diseased mind, and resulted in a horrid fascination in- 
stead of cheerfid attraction. Hawthorne, to be sure, 
possessed the gift of the raconteur ; but in general he 



SEER AND TELLER. 303 

was at once seer and teller, and the higher exertions 
of his imagination were always in the peculiarly symbolic 
atmosphere we are wont to associate with him. Irving's 
contented disposition in this regard is certainly very 
cliarming ; there are often moods in which it is a great 
relief to turn to it ; and he has in so far t he advantage 
over the oilier two. He pitches for us the tone of aver- 
age cultured minds in his time and locality ; and in read- 
ing him we have a comfortable sense of reality, than 
which nothing in fiction is more reassuring. This is al- 
most entirely absent from the spell Avith which Haw- 
thorne holds us ; and here, indeed, we touch the latter's 
most decided limitation as a writer of fiction; for although 
his magnificently portrayed characters do not want real- 
ity, an atmosphere of ghostliness surrounds them, warn- 
ing us that we must not look to find life there as we see 
it elsewhere. There is a Northern legend of a man who 
lay down to sleep, and a tljin smoke was seen to issue 
from his nostrils, traverse the ground, cross a rivulet, 
and journey on, finally returning to the place whence 
it came. When he awoke, he described an imaginary 
excursion of his oavu, following exactly the course which 
the smoke had taken. This indirect contact might fur- 
nish a partially true type of Hawthorne's mysterious 
intercourse with the world through his books. 

It would be a mistake, however, to attribute this differ- 
ence to the greater strength of Irving's humor, — a trait 
always much landed in him. It is witliout doubt a good 
quality. This mild, sweet radiance of an uncontaminated 
and well-bred spirit is not a common thing in literature. 
But I cannot fall in with the judgment that calls it "freer 
and far more joyous " than Addison's. Both in style and 
in humor Irving has caught something of the grace of 
" The Spectator " ; but as in the style he frequently falls 



304 IRVING'S HUMOR. 

short, writing feeble or jarring sentences, so in Immor I 
cannot see liow be is to be brought at all on a level with 
Addison, who is primarily a grave, stately, scholarly mind, 
but all the deeper on that account in the lustre of his 
humorous displays. Addison, too, had somewhat of the 
poet in him, and was capable of tragedy as well as of neat 
satire and compact characterization. But if we looked 
for a pithy embodiment of the difference between Irving 
and Hawthorne, we might call the former a " polite 
writer," and the latter a profound poet : as, indeed, I 
have called him in this essay, though with no intent to 
confuse the term with that given to poets who speak 
in verse. Pathos is the great touchstone of humor, 
and Irviug's pathos is always a lamentable failure. Is 
it not very significant, that he should have made so 
little of the story of Rip Van Winkle ? In his sketch, 
which has won so Mdde a fame and given a lasting 
association to the Kaatskills, there is not a suspicion 
of the immense pathos which the skill of an industrious 
playwright and the genius of that rare actor, Mr. Jeffer- 
son, have since developed from the tale. The Dame Van 
Winkle that we now know is the creation of Mr. Bouci- 
cault; to him it is we owe that vigorous character, — a 
scold, a tyrant to her husband, but neverl helcss full of 
relentful womanliness, and by the justice of her cause 
exciting our sympathy almost as much as Rip himself 
does. In the story, she wears an aspect of singular 
causelessness, and Rip's devotion to the drinking-can is 
barely hinted : the marvellous tenderness, too, and joyful 
sorrow of his return after the twenty years' sleep, are 
apparently not even suspected by the writer. It is the 
simple wonder and picturesqueness of the situation that 
charm him ; and while in the drama we are moved to the 
bottom of our hearts by the humorous tragicalness it 



RIP VAN WINKLE. 305 

casts over the spectacle of conflicting passions, the only 
outcome of the written tale is a passing reflection on the 
woe of being henpecked. "And it is a common wish of 
all henpecked husbands in the neighborhood, when life 
hangs heavy ou their hands, that they might have a quiet- 
ing draught out of Rip Van Wnikle's flagon." To he 
sure, there is a hidden moral here, of the folly of driving 
men to drunkenness ; but it is so much obscured as to 
suggest that this was of small moment in the writer's 
mind. Such a moral, in any case, must necessarily have 
beeu very delicately advanced, in order not to becloud 
the artistic atmosphere ; but a person of searching dra- 
matic genius would have found means to emphasize it 
without injury to art, just as it has been done on the 
stage. Imagine what divine vibrations of emotion Haw- 
thorne would have smitten out of this theme, had he been 
the originator of it. Certainly we should, as the case 
stands, have missed the whole immortal figment, had not 
Irving given it to us in germ ; the fact that our play- 
wright and our master comedian have made it so much 
greater and more beautiful does not annul that primary 
service ; but, looking at the matter historically, we must 
admit that Irving's share in the credit is that of the first 
projector of a scientific improvement, and the latter sort 
of person always has to forego a great part of his fame in 
favor of the one who consummates the discovery. I am 
willing to believe that there was a peculiar advantage in 
Irving's treatment ; namely, that he secured for his story 
a quicker and more general acceptance than might have 
been granted to something more profound ; but this does 
not alter the critical judgment that we have to pass upon 
it. If Irving had grasped the tragic spliere at all, he 
would have shone more splendidly in the comic. But 
the literary part of him, at least, never passed into the 



306 HAWTHORNE'S HUMOE. 

sliade : it somehow contrived to be always on that side 
of the earth which was towards the sun. Observe, now, 
the vital office of humor in Hawthorne's thought. It 
gleams out upon us from behind many of the gravest 
of his conceptions, like the silver side of a dark leaf 
turning iiv the wind. Wherever the concretion of guilt 
is most adamantine, there he lets his line slender jet 
of humor play like a lambent fire, until the dark mass 
crumbles, and the choragos of the tragedy begins his 
mournful yet hopeful chant among the ruins. Tliis may 
be verified in the "Seven Gables," " Blithedale," and 
" The Marble Faun " ; not in " The Scarlet Letter," for 
tiiat does not present Hawthorne's genius in its widest 
action. In one place he speaks of " the tragic power of 
laughter," — a discrimhiation which involves the whole 
deep originality of his mind. It is not irrelevant here to 
remark that at the most affecting portions of the play 
" Rip Van Winkle," the majority of the audience always 
kugh ; this, though irritating to a thouglitful listener, is 
really an involuntary tribute to the marvellous wisdom 
and perfection with which Jefferson mingles pathos and 
humor. Again Hawthorne : " Human destinies look om- 
inous without some perceptible intermixture of the sable 
or the gray." And, elsewliere : " There is something 
more awful in happitiess than in sorrow, the latter being 
earthly and finite, the former composed of the substance 
and texture of eternity, so that spirits still embodied may 
well tremble at it." These thoughts could never have 
occurred to Irving with the same intensity. Now, from 
all this we gather inference as to the deep sources of 
Hawthorne's humor. I sometimes think that Thalia was 
the daughter, and not the sister, of Melpomene. As to 
actual exhibition of humor, HaAvthorne's is made a dif- 
fusive medium to temper the rays of tragedy with, and 



POE AND HAWTHORNE. 307 

never appears in such iiumixed form as that of Irving. 
So that even though we must confess a smaller mental 
calibre in the latter, we may gladly grant him a supe- 
riority in his special mood of fun. 

An excellent English critic, Leslie Stephen, lately 
wrote : " Poe is a kind of Hawthorne and delirium 
tremens"- This announcement, however, betrays a sin- 
gular misapprehension. Wiien Ha,wthorne's tales first 
appeared, they were almost invariably taken to bear an 
intimate and direct relation to the author's own moods ; 
wliile Poe's were supposed to be daring flights of pure 
imagination, or ingenious attempts to prove theories held 
by the writer, but were not charged directly to his own 
experience. Time has shown that the converse was the 
case. The psychical conditions described by Hawthorne 
had only the remotest connection with any mood of his 
own ; they were mainly translations, into the language 
of genius, of certain impressions and observations drawn 
from the world around him. After his death, the Note- 
Books caused a general rustle of surprise, revealing as 
they did the simple, wholesome nature of this strange 
imaginer ; yet though he there speaks — surely with- 
out prejudice, because without the least knowledge that 
the world would ever hear him — of " the objectivity " 
of his fictions, critics have not yet wholly learned how 
far apart from himself these creations were. The ob- 
servation of some mental liabit in men, or law of inter- 
course between human beings, would strongly present 
itself to him ; and in order to get a concise embodiment, 
his genius planned some powerful situation to illus- 
trate it with ; or, at another time it might be that a 
strange incident, like that of Mr. Moody, suggesting 
" The Minister's Black Yeil," or a singular physiological 
fact like that on which " The Bosom Serpent " is based, 



308 THE FLAW IN POE. 

would call out Lis imagination to run a race with reality 
and outstrip it in touching the goal of truth. But, the 
conception once formed, tlie whole fictitious fabric would 
become entirely removed from himself, except so far as it 
touched him very incidentally ; and this expulsion of the 
idea from himself, so that it acquires a life and move- 
ment of its own, and can be contemplated by the artist 
from the outside, is the very distinction between deeply 
creative and merely inventive genius. Poe's was of the 
latter sort. He possessed a wild, arbitrary imagination, 
that sometimes leaped frantically high ; but his impres- 
siveness is always that of a nightmare, always completely 
morbid. Wliat we know of Poe's life leads inevitably to 
the conclusion that this quahty, if it did not spring from 
disease, was at least largely owing to it. For a time, it 
was the fashion to make a moral question of Poe's unfor- 
tunate obliquities ; but a more humane tendency reduces 
it to a scientific problem. Poe suffered great disaster at 
the hands of his unjust biographer; yet he was a worse 
enemy to himself than any one else could be. The fine 
enamel of his genius is all corroded by the deadly acid of 
his passions. The imperfections of his temperament have 
pierced his poetry and prose, shattered their structure,, 
and blurred their beauty. Only four or five of his poems — ■ 
"The Raven," "Ligeia," the earlier of the two addressed 
"To Helen," and the sonnet to his wife — escape being 
flawed by some fit of haste, some ungovernable error of 
taste, some hopeless, unaccountable break in their beauty. 
In criticism, Poe initiated a fearless and agile movement; 
he had au acute instinct in questions of literary form, 
amounting to a passion, as all his instincts and percep- 
tions did ; he had also the knack of finding clever rea- 
sons, good or bad, for all his opinions. These things 
are essential to a critic's equipment, and it was good 



BEAUTY AND INTERIOR DISCORD. 309 

service in Poe to exemplify them. Yet here, too, tlie 
underiniiiiuf? processes ol" his thoroughly uusouiid mind 
subverted the better qualities, vitiated his judgments 
with incredible jealousies and conflicting impulses, and 
withered the most that he wrote in this direction into 
something very like rubbish. We liave seen, for ex- 
ample, how his attempt to dispassionately examine Haw- 
thorne resulted. Sooner or later, too, he ran his own 
pen full against his rigid criteria for others. It is sug- 
gestive to find that the holder of such exacting doc- 
trine about beauty, the man also of whom pre-emi- 
nently it may be said, as Eaudelaire wrote of him, 
"Chance and the incomprehensible were his two great 
enemies," should so completely fail to reach even the 
unmoral perfection which he assigned as the highest 
attainable. Professing himself the special apostle of the 
beautiful in art, he nevertheless forces upon us continu- 
ally the most loathsome hideousness and the most debas- 
ing and unbeautiful horror. This passionate, unhehned, 
errant search for beauty was in fact not so much a nor- 
mal and intelligent desire, as an attempt to escape from 
interior discord ; and it was the discord which found ex- 
pression, accordingly, instead of the sense of beauty, — 
except (as has been said) in fragments. Whatever the 
cause, his brain had a rift of ruin in it, from the start, and 
though his delicate touch often stole a new grace from 
classic antiquity, it was the frangibility, the quick decay, 
the fall of all lovely and noble things, that excited and 
engaged him. " I have imbibed the shadows of fallen 
columns," he says in one of his tales, " at Balbec, and 
Tadmor, and Persepohs, until my very soul has become a 
ruin." Always beauty and grace are with him most 
poetic in their overthrow, and it is the shadow of ruined 
grandeur that he receives, instead of the still living light 



310 POE'S SUBJECTIVITY. 

SO fair upon tliein, or tlie green growth clinging around 
them. Hawthorne, too, Avandcred much amid human 
ruin, but it was not with dehght in the mere fact of 
decay ; rather with grieving over it, and the hope to 
learn how much of life was still left in the wreck, and 
how future structures miglit be made stronger by study- 
ing the sources of failure. One of the least thoughtful 
remarks which I have heard touching Hawthorne was 
this, that his books could not live because they dealt with 
.the " sick side " of human nature. As if great poets 
ever refrained from deahng witli it ! The tenure of fame 
depends on whether the writer has himself become in- 
fected watli sickness. With Hawthorne tliis is most cer- 
tainly not the case, for the morbid phases which he 
studied were entirely outside of himself. Poe, on the 
other hand, pictured his own half-maniacal moods and 
diseased fancies. There is absolutely no study of charac- 
ter in his stories, no dramatic separateness of being. He 
looks only for fixed and inert human quantities, with 
which he may juggle at will. He did not possess in- 
sight ; and the analytic quality of which he was so proud 
was merely a sort of mathematical ingenuity of calcula- 
tion, in which, however, he was extraordinarily keen. 
As a mere potency, dissociated from qualities, Poe must 
be rated almost liighest among American poets, and 
high among prosaists ; no one else oilers so much pun- 
gency, such impetuous and frightful energy crowded into 
such small compartments. Yet it would be difficult to 
find a poetic fury less allied to sane human life than that 
which informs iiis tales. It is not the representation of 
semi-insanity that he gives : he himself is its representa- 
tioe. Instead of commanding it, and bringing it into 
some sort of healthy relation with us, he is swayed and 
carried away by it. His genius flourished upon him like 



THE QUESTION OF SANITY. 311 

a deslruclive flame, and the ashes that it left are like 
a deadly powdered poison. Clifford Pyiichcon in the 
" Seven Gables " is Poe himself, deprived of the ability 
to act : in both are found the same consummate fastidi- 
ousness, the same abnormal egotism. And it is worth 
attention that %vhen Clifibrd is aroused to sudden action 
by Judge Pyncheon's death, the coruscating play of his 
intellect is almost precisely that brilliant but defective 
kind of ratiocination which Poe so delights to display. 
It is crazy wiidness, with a surface appearance of accu- 
rate and refined logic. In this fact, that Hawthorne — 
the calm, ardent, healthy master of imagination — is able 
to create the disordered type that Poe is, we shall find 
by how much the former is greater than the latter. 

A recent writer has raised distinctly the medical ques- 
tion as to Poe. He calls him " the mad man of letters 
par excellence, ^^ and by an ingenious investigation seems 
to establish it as probable that Poe was the victim of a 
form of epilepsy. But in demonstrating this, he attempts 
to make it part of a theory that all men of genius are 
more or less given over to this same "veiled epilepsy." 
And here he goes beyond the necessities of the case, and 
takes up an untenable position. There is a morbid and 
shattering susceptibility connected Avitii some genius ; 
but that tremulous, constantly readjusted sensitiveness 
■which indicates the perfect equilibrium of health in other 
minds must not be confounded with it. Such is the con- 
dition of tlie highest genius alone ; of men like Shake- 
spere and Hawthorne, who, however dissimilar their tem- 
peraments, grasp the two spheres of mind and character, 
the sane and the insane, and hold them perfectly recon- 
ciled by their gentle yet unsparing insight. A case like 
Poc's, where actual mental decay exists in so advanced a 
stage and gives to his productions a sharper and more 



312 TWOTOLD PHASES OF EACH. 

dazzling effect than would liave been theirs without it, 
is probably more unique, but it is certainly less admira- 
ble, less original in the true sense, than an instance of 
healthier endowment like Hawthorne. On the side of 
art, it is impossible to bring Poe into any competition 
with Hawthorne : although we have ranked him high in 
poetry and prose, regarded simply as a dynamic sub- 
stance, it must be confessed that iiis prose has nothing 
which can be called style, nor even a manner like Irving's 
very agreeable one. His feeling for form manifests itself 
in various ways, yet he constantly violates proportion for 
tlie sake of getting off one of his pseudo-philosophical 
disquisitions; and, notwithstanding many successful hits 
in expression, and a specious but misleading assumption 
of fervid accuracy in phraseology, his language is loose, 
promiscuous, and altogether tiresome. 

Poe, Irving, and Hawthorne have one marked literary 
condition in common : each shows a double side. With 
Poe the antithesis is between poetry and criticism ; 
Irving, having been brought up by Piction as a foster- 
mother, is eventually turned over to his rightful guardian. 
History ; and Hawthorne rests his hand from ideal de- 
sign, in elaborating quiet pictures of reality. In each 
case there is more or less seeming irreconcilement be- 
tween the two phases found in combination ; but the 
opposition is rather more distinct in Hawthorne, and the 
grasp with which it is controlled by him is stronger than 
that of either Poe or Irving, — again a result pronoun- 
cing him the master. 

There is still another issue on which comparison must 
be made. The question of nationality will for some 
time to come be an interesting one in any discussion 
of American authors. The American character is so 
relative, that it is only by a long series of contrasts, a 



THE AMEllICAN QUALITY. 313 

careful study of the registering-plate of literature, that 
we shall come to the point of defining it. American 
quality in literature is not like Greek, German, Frencli, 
English quality : those are each unified, and tlieir com- 
ponent elements stoutly enough welded together to make 
what may be called a positive impression ; but our dis- 
tinctions are relative. The nearest and most important 
means that we have for measuring them is that of com- 
parison with England; and anything strikingly original 
in American genius is found 1o be permanent in pro- 
portion as it maintains a certain relation to English 
literature, not quite easy to define. It is not one of 
hostility, for the best American minds thus far have had 
the sincerest kindliness toward the mother country; it 
involves, however, the claiming of separate standards 
of judgment. The primary division, both in the case 
of tiie New England Pilgrims and in that of our llev- 
olutionary patriots, was based on clearer perceptions of 
certain truths on the part of the cisatlantic English ; 
and this claiming of separate standards in literature is a 
continuation of that historic attitude. We are making 
a perpetual minority report on the rest of the world, sure 
that in time our voice will be an authoritative one. 
The attitude being a relative and not very positively 
predicable one, a singular integrity of judgment is re- 
quired in sustaining it. Of this Poe exhibits nothing. 
It was a part of the ingrained rebellion in him, that he 
revolted against the moneyed mediocracy of this coun- 
try, — a position in which he deserves much sympathy, — 
and perhaps this underlies his want of deep literary iden- 
tification with the national character in general. But more 
probably his genius was a detonating agent which could 
Lave been convulsed into its meet activity anywhere, and 
liad nothing to do with a soil. It is significant thai; lie 
U 



314 lEVTNG TN ENGLAND. 

A¥as taken up by a group of men in Paris, headed by Bau- 
delaire and assisted by Tlieopliile Gautier, as a sort of 
private demigod of art; and I believe lie stands in higli 
esteem with the Rossetti-Morris family of English poets. 
Irving, on the other hand, comes directly upon the 
ground of diiference bcLween the American and the 
English genius, but it is with the colors of a neutral. 
Irving's position was peculiar. He went to Europe 
young, and ripened his genius under other suns than 
those that imbrowned the hills of his native Hudson. 
He had won success enough through "Salmagundi" and 
"Knickerbocker's History" to give him the importance 
of an accredited literary ambassador from the Republic, 
in treating with a foreign audience ; and he really did us 
excellent service abroad. This alone secures him an im- 
portant place in our literary history. Particularly wise 
and dignified is the tone of his short chapter called "Eng- 
lish Writers on America " ; and this sentence from it 
might long have served in our days of fairer fame as a 
popular motto : " We have but to live on, and every day 
we live a whole volume of refutation." His friendship 
with Scott, also, was a delightful addition to the ameni- 
ties of literature, and shall remain a goodly and refresh- 
ing memory to us always. Yet what he accomplished in 
this M^ay for American literature at large, Irving compen- 
sated for with some loss of his own dignity. It cannot 
be denied that the success of " Tlie Sketch-Book " led to 
an overdoing of his part in "Bracebridge Hall." "Sal- 
magundi" was the first step in the path of palpable 
imitation of Addison's "Spectator"; in "The Sketch- 
Book," thougii taking some charming departures, the 
writer made a more refined attempt to produce the same 
order of effects so perfectly attained by the suave Queen 
Anne master; and in "Bracebridge Hall" the recollec- 



IRVING AND ADDISON. 315 

tioii of the Sir Roger de Coverley papers becomes 
positively annoying. It is not that the style of Addi- 
son is precisely reproduced, of course, but the general 
resemblance in manner is as close as it could well have 
been without direct and conscious copying, the memory 
of Addisonian methods is too apparent. Irving's real 
genius, wliich occasionally in his other writings emits 
delicious flashes, does not often assert itself in this 
work; and though lie has the knack of using the dry 
point of Addison's humor, he does n't achieve what 
etchers call "the burr" that ought to result from its 
use. Addison, too, stings his lines in with true aqua- 
fortis precision, and Irvhig's sketches are to his as pen- 
and-ink drawing to the real etching. But it was not only 
this lack of literary independence that belittled Irving's 
dignity. He had become so well satisfied with his post of 
mediator between the writers of the two nations, that it 
became paramount with him to preserve the good-will he 
had won in England, and this appears in the cautious 
and almost obsequious mien of " Bracebridge." One may 
trace it also, with amused pain, in. his correspondence 
with Paulding, — honest, pathetic Paulding, a rabid miso- 
Briton who burned to write something truly American, 
and could n't ; whom Drake laughingly hails as 

" The bard of the backwoods. 
The poet of cabbages, log-huts, and gin." 

Irving was vexedly concerned at the violent outbreaks of 
liis old coadjutor, directed against the British ; yet, 
though they were foolish, tliey showed real pluck. But 
if Ave need other proof of the attitude which Irving was 
distinctly recognized to have taken up, we may turn to 
a page on which "The Edinburgh Review," unusually 
amiable toward him at first, thus vented its tvranuical 



316 IRVING'S LIMITATIONS. 

displeasure at his excessive complaisance: "He gasped 
for British popularity [it said] : he came, and found it. 
He was received, caressed, applauded, made giddy : 
natural politeness owed him some return, for he imi- 
tated, admired, deferred to us It was plain he 

thought of nothing else, and was ready to sacrifice every- 
thing to obtain a smile or a look of approbation." In a 
less savage fasliion we, too, may admit the not very pleas- 
ant truth here enunciated with such unjust extremeness. 
An interval of nearly forty years lies between the date of 
the " Sketch-Book " and " Bracebridge " and that of 
" Our Old Home " ; the difference in tone fully corre- 
sponds to the lapse of time. 

In the use of native material, of course, Irving was a 
pioneer, along witli Cooper, and was in this quite different 
from Poe, who had no aptitude in that way. " Knicker- 
bocker's History of New York " is too farcical to take a 
high position on this score, though it undoubtedly had a 
beneficial effect in stirring up pride and interest in local 
antiquities ; but " Hip Van Winkle " and " The Legend 
of Sleepy Hollow" were valuable acquisitions so far as 
they went. Would that they had been wrought out with 
a more masterly touch ; and would that Irving had pene- 
trated further in this direction ! But, though these Hud- 
son legends will long keep his fame renewed, it will per- 
haps be chiefly as a historian that he will be prized. His 
pleasant compilation on Goldsmith, his "Mahomet," "Co- 
lumbus," and " Conquest of Granada," though not too 
profound, fill an enviable niche in popular esteem ; and 
his mellow and stately narrative of Washington's life is 
a work of enduring excellence. But these lie outside 
of our present discussion. Nor need we compare his 
achievements in native fiction with Hawthorne's, after 
the review we have been making of the latter's relation 
to New England. 



FINAL EqUATION. 317 

Poe and Irving and Hawthorne liave all met with ac- 
ceptance in other countries, and their works have been 
translated into several languages. Irving has exercised 
no perceptible influence on literature at home or abroad ; 
Poe has entered more or less into the Avorkiugs of a 
school in England and a group in France. Hawthorne's 
position on the Continent has perhaps not been so much 
one of conquest as of receiving an abstract admiration ; 
but he has taken much stronger hold of the Anglo-Saxon 
mind than either of the others, and it is probable that his 
share in inspiring noble literature in America will — as 
it has already begun to show itself an important one — 
become vastly greater in future. It is impossible, as we 
have seen, to fix an absolute ratio between these writers. 
Irving has a more human quality than Poe, but Poe is 
beyond dispute the more original of the two. Each, 
again, has something which Hawthorne does not possess. 
But, if we must attempt at all to reduce so intricate a 
problem to exact terms, the mutual position of the three 
may be stated in the equation, Poe plus Irving plus an 
unknown quantity equals Hawthorne. 




XIII. 



THE LOSS AND THE GAIN. 




HE suddenness witli wliicli Hawtliorne faded 
away and died, when at the zenitli of his fame, 
is no less strange and sad and visionary now 
than it was a poignant anguish then. He returned from 
Europe somewliat lingeringly, as we have seen, knowing 
too w^ell tlie difference between the regions lie was quit- 
ting and the tliinner, sharper, and more wasting atmos- 
phere of a country where every one who has an3'^thing to 
give is constantly drawn upon from every side, and 
has less resource for intellectual replenishment than in 
other lands. His seven years in England and Italy had, 
. on tlie whole, been a period of high prosperity, of warm 
and gratifying recognition, of varied and delightful lit- 
erary encounter, in addition to the pleasure of sojourning 
among so many new and suggestive scenes. And when 
he found himself once more on the old ground, with the 
old struggle for subsistence staring him steadily in the 
face again, it is not difficult to conceive how a certain 
degree of depression would follow. Just as thig reaction 
had set in, the breaking out of civil Avar threw upon 
Hawthorne, before he had thne to brace himself for the 
shock, an immense burden of sorrowing sympathy. The 



HAWTHORNE AND THE WAR. 319 

conflict of feelings wliicli it excited on the public side lias 
been sketched ; and that alone should have been enough 
to make the j-ears of strife a time of continuous gloom 
and anxiety to him ; but it would be losing sight of a 
very large element in his distress, not to add that he 
mourned over tlie multitude of private griefs vrhich were 
the harvest of battle as acutely as if they had all been 
his own losses. His intense imagination burned them 
too deeply into his heart. How can we call this weak- 
ness, which involved such strength of manly tenderness 
and sympathy ? " Hawthorne's life was shortened by 
the war," Mr. Lowell says. Expressing this view once, 
to a friend, who had served long in the Union army, I 
was met with entire understanding. He told me that 
his own father, a stanch Unionist, though not in military 
service, was as certahily brought to his death by the war 
as any of the thousands who fell in battle. In how 
wide and touchingly humane a sense may one apply to 
Hawthorne Marvell's line on Cromwell's death, — 

" To Love and Grief the fatal writ was signed ! " 

His decline was gradual, and semi-conscious, as if from 
the first he foresaw that he could not outlive these trials. 
In April, 1862, he visited Washington, and wrote the 
article "Chiefly about War Matters" already alluded to. 
He has left this glimpse of himself at that time : — 

" I stay here only while Leutze finishes a poi'trait, which 
I think will be the best ever painted of the same unworthy 
subject. One charm it must needs have, — au aspect of im- 
mortal jollity and vvell-to-do-ness ; for Leutze, when the sitting 
begins, gives me a first-rate cigar, and when he sees me getting 
tired, he brings out a bottle of splendid champagne ; and we 
quailed and smoked yesterday, in a blessed state of mutual 
good-will, for three hours and a half, during which the picture 



820 FAILING SPIRITS. 

made a really miraculous progress. Leutze is tlie best of 
fellows." 

The trip was taken to benefit his health, which had 
already begun to give way; and though he wrote thus 
clieerily, he was by no means well. In another published 
note there is this postscript : — 

"My hair really is not so white as this photograph, which I 
enclose, makes me. The sun seems to take an infernal pleasure 
in making me venerable, — as if I were as old as himself." 

He had already, as we know, begun to meditate upon 
"The Dolliver Romance," trudging to and fro upon liis 
hill-top, which was called, at home, " the mount of 
vision." But before proceeding with that, he began the 
series of essays composing "Our Old Home," not yet 
feeling strong enough for the more trying exertion of 
fiction. But the preparation of these, charming as they 
are, brought no exhilaration to his mind. 

" I am delighted," he writes to his publisher, "at what you 
tell me about the kind appreciation of my articles, for 1 feel 
rather gloomy about them myself. .... I cannot come to 
Boston to spend more than a day, just at present. It would 
suit me better to come for a visit when the spring of next year 
is a little advanced, and if you renew your hospitable propo- 
sition then, I shall probably be glad to accept it ; though T 
have now been a hermit so long, that the thought affects -me 
somewhat as it would to invite a lobster or a crab to step out 
of his shell." 

His whole tone with regard to "Our Old Home" 
seems to have been one of fatigue and discouragement. 
He had, besides, to deal with the harassing question of 
the dedication to Franklin Pierce, which he solved iu this 
manly and admirable letter to his publisher : — 



STOPPAGE OF THE ROMANCE. 321 

" I Ihaiik you for your note of the 15th instant, and have 
delayed my reply thus long in order to ponder deeply on your 
advice, smoke ciijars over it, and see what it might be possible 
for me to do towards taking it. I find that it would be a piece 
of poltroonery in me to withdraw either the dedication or the 
dedicatory letter. My long and intimate personal relations 
with Pierce render the dedication altogether proper, especially 
as regards this book, which would have had no existence with- 
out his kindness; and if he is so exceedingly unpopular that 
his name is enough to sink the volume, there is so much the 
more need that an old friend should stand by him. I cannot, 
merely on account of pecuniary profit or literary reputation, go 
back from what I have deliberately felt and thought it right to 
do ; and if I were to tear out the dedication, I should never 
look at the volume again without remorse and shame. As for 
the literary public, it must accept my book precisely as I think 
fit to give it, or let it alone." 

By this time, the energy requisite for carrying on the 
Romance bad sunk still lower, so that he wrote: — 

" I can't tell you when to expect an instalment of the 
Romance, if ever. There is something preternatural in my 
reluctance to begin. I linger at the threshold, and have a per- 
ception of veiy disagreeable phantasms to be encountered if I 
enter. I wish God had given me the faculty of writing a 
sunshiny book." 

And, a little later : — 

" I don't see much probability of my having the first chapter 
of the Romance ready so soon as you want it. There are two 
or three chapters ready to be written, but I am not yet robust 
enough to begin, and I feel as if I should never carry it 
through." 

His inability to work has been illustrated in the nu- 
merous bulletins of this period published by Mr. Fields : 
tbey show him at times despondent, as in the extracts 



322 PRESENTIMENT. 

ahove, then again in a state of semi-resolution. At 
anotlier time there is mixed presentiment and humor in 
his report. 

" I am not quite np to writing yet, but shall make an effort 
as soon as I see any hope of success. You ought to be thank- 
ful that (like most other broken-down authors) I do not pester 
you with decrepit pages, and insist upon your accepting them 
as full of the old spirit and vigor. That trouble, perhaps, still 
awaits you, after I shall have reached a further stage of decay. 
Seriously, my mind has, for the ])resent, lost its temper and its 
tine edge, and I have an instinct that I had better kept quiet. 
Perhaps I shall have a new spirit of vigor, if I wait quietly for 
it ; perhaps not." 

But over all these last notes there hangs a melancholy 
shadow that makes the flickering humor even sadder than 
the awesome conviction that he has done with writing. 
How singular the mingled mood of that last letter, in 
which he grimly jests upon the breaking-down of his 
literary faculty ! Here he announces, finally : " I hardly 
know what to say to the public about this abortive 
llomance, though I know pretty well what the case will 
be. T shall never finish it." Yet the cause was not so 
much the loss of literary power, as the physical exhaus- 
tion that had already worn him away beyond recovery. 
He longed for England ; and possibly if he could have 
gone thither, the voyage, the milder climate, and the sense 
of rest that he would have felt there, miGrht have re- 
stored him. He had friends in this country, however, 
who made attempts to break up the disastrous condition 
into which he had so unexpectedly come. In May of 
1863, when "Our Old Home" was printing, lie received 
from his friend Mr. Lowell this most charming invitation 
to come to Cambridfre : — ■ 



LETTER FROM LOWELL. 323 

My dear Hawthorne: — I hope you have not forgotten 
that during "anniversary week" you were to make me a little 
anniversaiy by a visit? 1 have been looking forward to it ever 
so long. My plan is that you come on Friday, so as to attend 
the election-meeting of our club, and then stay over Sunday, 
and Monday, and Tuesday, which is the last day of my holi- 
days. How will that do ? I am glad to hear your book is 
going through the pi-ess, and you will be nearer your proof- 
sheets here. I have pencils of all coloi'S for correcting in all 
moods of mind, — red for sanguine moments when one thinks 
there is some use in writing at all, blue for a modest depres- 
sion, and black for times when one is satisfied there is no 
longer an intelligent public nor one reader of taste left iu the 
world. You shall have a room to yourself, nearly as high and 
quite as easy of access as your tower, and I pledge myself that 
my ci'ows, cat-birds, orioles, chimbley-swallows, and squirrels 
shall present you with the freedom of their city iu a hollow 
walnut, so soon as you arrive. 

Now will you write and say when you are to be expected ? 
I assure you I have looked forward to your coming as one of 
my chiefest spring pleasures, ranking it with the advent of the 
birds. 

Always cordially yours, 

J. H. Lowell. 

" I have smoked a cigar over your kind invitation," Avrote 
Hawthonie, in answer, " and mean to come. There is a little 
bit of business weighing upon me (literary business of course, 
an article for the magazine and for my volume, which I ought 
to have begun and finished long ago), but I hope to smash it in 
a day or two, and will meet you at the club on Saturday. I 
shall have very great pleasure in the visit." 

But, at the kst moment, lie was obliged to give it up, 
being detained by a cold. And there seemed indeed a 
fatality which interfered witli all attempts to thwart the 



324 THE LAST DAYS. 

corning evil. At the beginning of April, 1864, completely 
broken down, yet without apparent cause, he set out 
southward with Mr. William Ticknor. On arriving at 
Philadelphia he began to improve ; but Mr. Ticknor's 
sudden death overthrew the little he had gained, and 
caused him to sink still more. It is not my purpose here 
to dwell upon the sad and unbeautiful details of a last 
illness : these things would make but a harsh closing 
chord in the strain of meditation on Hawthorne's life 
which we have been following out, — a life so beautiful and 
noble that to surround its ending with the remembrance 
of mere mortal ailment has in it something of coarseness. 
But it was needful to show in what way this great ispirit 
bowed beneath the weight of its own sympathy with 
a national woe. Even when Dr. Holmes saw him in 
Boston, though " his aspect, medically considered, was 
very unfavorable," and though " he spoke as if his work 
were done, and he should write no more," still "there 
was no failing noticeable in his conversational powers." 
"There was nothing in Mr. Hawthorne's aspect," wrote 
Dr. Holmes, " that gave warning of so sudden an end as 
that which startled us all." He passed on into the 
shadow as if of his own will ; feeling that his country lay 
in ruins, that the human lot carried with it more hate 
and horror and sorrow than he could longer bear to look 
at ; welcoming — except as those dear to him were con- 
cerned — the prospect of that death which he alone knew 
to be so near. It was on the 19th of May, 1864, that 
the news came from Plymouth, in New Hampshire, — 
whither he had gone with Ex-President Pierce, — that 
Hawthorne was dead. Afterward, it was recalled with a 
kind of awe that through many years of his life Haw- 
thorne had been in the habit, when trying a pen or idly 
scribbling at any time, of writing the number sixty-four ; 



REST. 325 

as if the forelmowledge of his death, which he showed iu 
the final days, had already begun to manifest itself in this 
indirect way long before. Indeed, he had himself felt 
that the number was connected witii his life in some fatal 
way. Eive days later he was carried to Sleepy Hollow, 
the beautiful cemetery where he had been wont to walk 
among the pines, where once when living at the Manse 
he had lain npon the grass talking to Margaret Fuller, 
when Mr. Emerson came upon them, and smiled, and 
said the Muses were in the woods that day. 

A simple stone, with the single word "Hawthorne" cut 
upon it, was placed above him. He had wished that there 
should be no monument. He liked Wordsworth's grave 
at Grasmere, and had written, "It is pleasant to think 
and know that he did not care for a stately monument." 
Longfellow and Lowell and Holmes, Emerson and Louis 
Agassiz, and his friends Pierce, and Hillard, with Ellery 
Channing, and other famous men, assembled on that 
peaceful morning to take their places in the funeral 
train. Some who had not known him in life came long- 
distances to see him, now, and ever afterward bore about 
with them the memory of his aspect, strong and beauti- 
ful, in his last repose. The orchards were blossoming ; 
the roadside-banks were blue with violets, and the lilies 
of the valley, which were Hawthorne's favorites among 
the flowers, had come forth in quiet companies, to look 
their last on liis face, so white and quiet too. So, while 
the batteries that had murdered him roared sullenly in the 
distant South, the rites of burial were fulfilled over the 
dead poet. Like a clear voice beside the grave, as we 
look back and listen, Longfellow's simple, penetrating 
chant returns upon the ear. 

In vain to sum up, here, the loss unspeakable suffered 
in Hawthorne's death ; and no less vain the attempt to 



326 IlEGRETS AND COMPENSATIONS. 

fix in a few words tlie incalculable gain liis life has left 
with us. Wlien one remembers the power that was 
unexhausted in him still, one is ready to impeach cold 
Time and Fate for their treason to the fair prospect that 
lay before us all, in the continuance of his career. We 
look upon these few great works, that may be numbered 
on the fingers of a band, and wonder what good end was 
served by the silent shutting of those rich pages that 
bad just begun to open. We remember the tardy recog- 
nition that kept the fountain of his spirit so long half 
concealed, and the necessities that forced him to give ten 
of his best years to the sterile industry of official duties. 
But tliere are great compensations. Without the youth- 
ful period of liopes deferred, Hawthorne, as we have 
seen, would not have been the unique force, the high, 
untrammelled thinker that he became through that fortu- 
nate isolation ; wanting the uncongenial contact of his 
terms at Boston and Salem and Liverpool, it may be 
that he could not have developed his genius with such 
balance of strength as it now shows ; and, finally, without 
the return to his native land, the national fibre in him 
would have missed its crowning grace of conscientious- 
ness. He might in that case have written more books, 
but the very loss of these, implying as it does bis pure 
love of country, is an acquisition much more positively 
valuable. 

There is a fitness, too, in the abrupt breaking off of 
his activity, in so far as it gives emphasis to that incom- 
pleteness of any verbal statement of truth, which he was 
continually insisting upon with his readers. 

Hawthorne, it is true, expanded so constantly, that 
liowcver many works he might have produced, it seems 
unlikely tliat any one of them would have failed to record 
some large movement in his growth ; and therefore it is 



HAWTHORNE'S CREATIONS. 327 

perhaps to be regretted tliat liis life could not liaA^e been 
made to solely serve his genius^ so that ^ve might liave 
had the whole sweep of his imagination clearly exposed. 
As it is, he has not given us a large variety of characters ; 
and Hester, Zenobia, and Miriam bear a certain general 
likeness one to another. Phcebe, however, is quite at 
the opposite pole of womanhood ; Hilda is as unlike any 
of them as it is easy to conceive of her being; and 
Priscilla, again, is a feminine nature of unique calibre, as 
weird but not so warm as Goethe's Mignon, and at the 
same time a distinctly American type, in her nervous yet 
captivating fragility. In Priscilla and Phoebe are em- 
bodied two widely opposed classes of New England 
women. The male cliaracters, with the exception of 
Donatello and Hollingsworth, are not so remarkable as 
the feminine ones : Coverdale and Kenyon come very 
close together, both being artistic and both reflectors for 
the persons that surround them ; and Dimmesdale is to 
some extent the same character, — with the artistic escape 
closed upon his passions, so that they turn within and 
ravage his heart, — arrested and altered by Puritan in- 
fluences. Chillingworth is perhaps too devilish a shape 
of revenge to be discussed -as a human individual. Sep- 
timius, again, is distinct; and the characterization of 
Westervelt, in "Blithedale," slight as it is, is very stimu- 
lating. Perhaps, after all, what leads us to pronounce 
upon the whole fictitious company a stricture of homo- 
geneity is the fact that the author, though presenting us 
each time with a set of persons sufficiently separate from 
his previous ones, does not emphasize their differences 
with the same amount of external description that w^e 
habitually depend upon from a novelist. The similarity 
is more in the author's mode of presentation than in the 
creations themselves. 



328 NEW MEANING OF ROMANCE. 

This monotone in Avliicli all the personages of bis 
dramas share is nearly related with some special distinc- 
tions of his genius. He is so fastidious in his desire for 
perfection, that he can scarcely permit his actors to speak 
loosely or ungrammatically : though retaining their es- 
sential individuality, they are endowed with the author's 
own delightful power of expression. This outward phasis 
of his work separates it at once from that of the simple 
novelist, and leads us to consider the special applicability 
to it of the term "romance." He had not the realistic 
tendency, as we usually understand that, but he possessed 
the power to create a new species of fiction. jPor the 
kind of romance that he has left us differs from all com- 
positions previously so called. It is not romance in the 
sense of D'Urfe's or Scuderi's; it is very far from com- 
ing within the scope of Fielding's " romances " ; and it is 
entirely unconnected with the tales of the German Ko- 
mantic school. It is not the romance of sentiment ; nor 
that of incident, adventure, and character viewed under 
a wordly coloring : it has not the mystic and melodra- 
matic bent belonging to Tieck and Novalis and Fouque. 
There are two things which radically isolate it from all 
these. The first is its quality of revived belief. Haw- 
thorne, as has been urged already, is a great believer, a 
man who has faith ; his belief goes out toward what is 
most beautiful, and this he finds only in moral truth. 
With him, poetry and moral insight are sacredly and 
indivisibly wedded, and their progeny is perfect beauty. 
This unsparingly conscientious pursuit of the highest 
truth, this metapliysical instinct, found in conjunction 
with a varied and tender appreciation of all forms of 
human or other life, is what makes him so decidedly the 
representative of a wholly new order of novelists. Be- 
lief, however, is not what he has usually' been credited 



OUTLINE OF GREATNESS. 329 

with, so much as incredulity. But the appearance of 
doubt is superficial, and arises from his fondness for 
illuminating fine but only half-perceptible traces of truth 
with the torch of superstition. Speaking of the super- 
natural, he says in his English journal: "It is remarkable 
that Scott should have felt interested in such subjects, 
being such a worldly and earthly man as he was; but 
then, indeed, almost all forms of popular superstition do 
clothe the ethereal with earthly attributes, and so make 
it grossly perceptible." This observation has a still 
greater value when applied to Hawthorne himself. And 
out of this questioning belief and transmutation of super- 
stition into truth — for such is more exactly his method 
— proceeds also that quality of value and rarity and 
awe-enriched significance, with which he irradiates real 
life until it is sublimed to a delicate cloud-image of the 
eternal verities. 

If these things are limitations, they are also founda- 
tions of a vast originality. Every greatness must have 
an outline. So that, although he is removed from the 
list of novelists proper, although his spiritual inspiration 
scares away a large class of sympathies, and although his 
strictly New England atmosphere seems to chill and re- 
strain his dramatic fervor, sometimes to his disadvantage, 
these facts, on the other hand, are so many trenches dug 
around him, fortifying his fair eminence. Isolation and 
a certain degree of limitation, in some such sense as this, 
belong peculiarly to American originality. But Haw- 
thorne is the embodiment of the youth of this country ; 
and though he will doubtless furnish inspiration to a long 
line of poets and novelists, it must be hoped that they, 
likewise, will stand for other phases of its development, 
to be illustrated in other ways. No tribute to Haw- 
thorne is less in accord with the biddings of his genius 



330 HAWTHOIINE'S INFLUENCE. 

than tliat wlilcli would merely make a school of fol- 
lowers. 

It is too early to say what position Hawthorne will 
take in the literature of the world ; but as his influence 
gains the ascendant in America, by prompting new and 
2^;«-liawthornesque originalities, it is likely also that it 
will be made manifest in England, according to some 
unspecifiable ratio. Not that any period is to be dis- 
tinctly colored by the peculiar dye in which his own 
pages are dipped ; but the renewed tradition of a highly 
organized yet simple style, and still more tlie masculine 
tenderness and delicacy of thought and the fine adjust- 
ment of .aesthetic and ethical obligations, the omnipresent 
truthfulness which he carries with him, may be ex- 
pected to become a constituent part of very many minds 
widely opposed among themselves. I believe there is 
no fictionist who penetrates so far into individual con- 
sciences as Hawthorne ; that many persons will be found 
who derive a profoundly religious aid from his unobtru- 
sive but commanding sympathy. In the same way, his 
sway over the literary mind is destined to be one of no 
secondary degree. " Deeds are the ofFspring of words," 
says Heine; "Goethe's pretty words are childless." Not 
so with Hawthorne's. Hawthorne's repose is the acme 
of motion ; and though turning on an axis of conserva- 
tism, the radicalism of his mind is irresistible ; he is 
one of the most powerful because most unsuspected 
revolutionists of the world. Therefore, not only is he au 
incalculable factor in private character, but in addition 
his unnoticed leverage for the thought of the age is 
prodigious. These great abilities, subsisting with a tem- 
per so modest and unafTected, and never unhumanized 
by the abstract enthusiasm for art, place liim on a plane 
between Sliakespere and Goethe. With the universality 



FUTURE VIEWS. ' 331 

of the first only just budding within his mind, he has 
not so clear a response to all the varying tones of 
lusty human life, and the individuality in his utterance 
amounts, at particular instants, to constraint. With less 
erudition than Goethe, but also less of the freezing pride 
of art, he is infinitely more humane, sympathetic, holy. 
His creations are statuesquely moulded like Goethe's, but 
they have the same quick music of heart-throbs that 
Shakespere's have. Hawthorne is at the same moment 
ancient and modern, plastic and picturesque. Another 
generation will see more of him than we do ; difi'erent 
interpreters will reveal other sides. As a powerful blow 
suddenly descending hiay leave the surface it touches un- 
marked, and stamp its impress on the substance beneath, 
so his presence will more distinctly appear among those 
farther removed from him than we. A single mind may 
concentrate your vision upon him in a particular way ; 
but the covers of any book must perforce shut out 
something of the whole, as the trees in a vista narrow the 
landscape. 

Look well at these leaves I lay before you ; but hav- 
ing read them throw tlie volume away, and contemplate 
the man himself. 




APPENDIX. 




N May, 1870, an article was published in the " Port- 
land Transcript," giving some of the facts connected 
with Hawthorne's sojourn in Maine, as a boy. This 
called out a letter from Alexandria, Va., signed 
" W. S.," and purporting to come from a person who had 
lived at Raymond, in boyhood, and had been a companion of 
Hawthorne's. He gave some little reminiscences of that time, 
recalling the fact that Hawthorne had read him some poetry 
founded on the Tarbox disaster, already mentioned.* Himself 
he described as having gone to sea at twenty, and having been 
a wanderer ever since. In speaking of the date of the poetry, 
" We could not have been more than ten years old," he said. 
This, of course, is a mistake, the accident having happened in 
1819, when Hawthorne was fourteen. And it is tolerably 
certain that he did not even visit Raymond until he was twelve. 
The letter called out some reminiscences from Mr. Robinson 
Cook, of Bolster's ]Mills, in Maine, who had also known Haw- 
thorne as a boy ; some poetry on the Tarbox tragedy was also 
found, and printed, which afterward proved to have been writ- 
ten by another person ; and one or two other letters were pub- 
lished, not especially relevant to Hawthorne, but concerning 

* See mile, p. 89. 



334 APPENDIX. 

the Tarbox affair. After this, " W. S." wrote again from 
Alexandria (November 23, 1870), revealing the fact that he 
had come into possession, several years before, of the manu- 
script book from which he afterward sent extracts. The book, 
he explained, was found by a man named Small, who had as- 
sisted in moving a lot of furniture, among it a "large mahog- 
any bookcase" full of old books, from the old Manning House. 
This was several years before the civil war, and "W. S." met 
Small in the army, in Virginia, He reported that the book — • 
"originally a bound blank one not ruled," and "gnawed by 
mice or eaten by moths on the edges " — contained about two 
hundred and fifty pages, and was written throughout, "the 
first part in a boyish hand though legibly, and showing in its 
progress a marked improvement in penmanship." The pas- 
sages reprinted in the present volume were sent by him, over 
the signature " W. Sims," to the "Transcript," and published 
at different dates (February 11, 1871 ; April 22, 1871). Their 
appearance called out various communications, all tending to 
establish their genuineness ; but, beyond the identification of 
localities and persons, and the approximate establishing of 
dates, no decisive proof was forthcoming. Sims himself, how- 
ever, was recalled by former residents near Ra\Tnond ; and 
there seemed at least much inferential proof in favor of the 
notes. A long silence ensued upon the printing of the second 
portion ; and at the end of 1871 it was made known that Sims 
had died at Pensacola, Florida. The third and last supposed 
extract from Hawthorne's note-book was sent from Virginia 
again, in 1873 (published June 21 of that year), by a person 
professing to have charge of Sims's papers. This person was 
written to by the editors of the " Transcript," but no reply has 
ever been received. A relative of Hawthorne in Salem also 
wrote to the Pensacola journal in which Sims's death was an- 
nounced, making inquiry as to its knowledge of him and as to 
the source of the mortuary notice. No reply was ever received 
from this quarter, either. Sims, it is said, had been in the 
secret service under Colonel Baker, of dreaded fame in war- 



APPENDIX. 335 

days ; and it may be that, having enemies, he feared the noto- 
riety to which his contributions to journalism might expose 
him, and decided to die, — at least so far as ])rinter's ink could 
kill him. All these circumstances are unfortunate, because 
they make the solution of doubts concerning the early notes 
quite imi^ossible, for the present. 

The fabrication of the journal by a person possessed of some 
literary skill and familiar with the localities mentioned, at dates 
so long ago as 1816 to 1819, might not be an impossible feat, 
but it is an extremely improbable one. It is not likely that an 
ordinary impostor would hit upon the sort of incident selected 
for mention in these extracts. Even if he drew upon circum- 
stances of his own boyhood, transferring them to Hawthorne's, 
he must possess a singularly clear memoiy, to recall matters of 
this sort ; and to invent them Avould require a nice imaginative 
faculty. One of the first passages, touching the '"' son of old 
Mrs. Shane" and the "son of the Widow Hawthorne," is of a 
sort to entirely evade the mind of an impostor. The whole 
method of observation, too, seems very characteristic. If 
the portion descriptive of a raft and of the manners of the lum- 
bermen be compared with certain memoranda in the "Ameri- 
can Note-Books" (July 13 and 15, 1837), derived from some- 
what similar scenes, a general resemblance in the way of seiz- 
ing characteristics will be observed. Of course, if the early 
notes are fabrications, it may be that the author of them drew 
carefully after passages of the maturer journal, and this among 
others. But the resemblance is crossed by a greater youthful- 
ness in the early notes, it seems to me, which it would be hard 
to produce artificially. The cool and collected style of the early 
journal is not improbable in a boy like Hawthorne, who had read 
many books and lived much in the companionship of older per- 
sons. Indeed, it is very much like the style of " The Specta- 
tor" of 1820. A noticeable coincidence is, that the pedler, 
Dominicus Jordan, should be mentioned in both the journal 
and " The Spectator." The circumstance that the dates should 
all have been said to be missing from the manuscript book is sus- 



336 APPENDIX. 

picious. Yet the last extract has the mouth and year appended, 
August, 1819. What is more important is, that the date of 
the initial inscription is given as 1816; and at the time when 
this was announced it had not been ascertained even by Haw- 
thorne's own family and relatives that he had been at Ray- 
mond so early. But since the publications in the " Transcript," 
some letters have come to light of which I have made use ; and 
one of these, bearing date July 21, 1818, to which I have al- 
luded in another connection, speaks of Raymond from actual 
recollection. " Does the Pond look the same as when I was 
there ? It is almost as pleasant at Nahant as at Raymond. I 
thought there was no place that I should say so much of." 
The furnisher of the notes, if he was disingenuous, might in- 
deed have remembered that Hawthorne was in Maine about 
1816 ; he may also have relied on a statement in the " Tran- 
script's " editorial, to the effect that Hawthorne was taken to 
Raymond in 1814. In that editorial, it is also observed : 
" Hawthorne was then a lad of ten years." I have already said 
that Sims refers to the period of the verses on the Tarboxes 
as being a time when he and Hawthorne were " not more than 
ten years old." This, at first, would seem to suggest that he 
was relying still further upon the editorial. But if he had been 
taking the editorial statement as a basis for fabrication, it is 
not likely that he would have failed to ascertain exactly the 
date of the freezing of Mr. and Mrs. Tarbox, which was 1819. 
The careless way in which he alludes to this may have been 
the inadvertence of an impostor trying to make his account 
agree with one already published ; but it is more likely that the 
sender of the notes did not remember the precise year in which 
the accident occurred, and was confused by the statement of the 
"Transcript." An impostor must have taken more pains, one 
would think. It must also be noticed that " the Widow Haw- 
thorne " is spoken of in the notes. Sims, however, in his pre- 
liminary letter, refers to the fact that "the universal pronun- 
ciation of the name in Raymond was Hathorn, • — the first 
syllable exactly as the word ' hearth ' was pronounced at that 



APPENDIX. 337 

time"; and the explanation of the spelling in the notes doubt- 
less is that Sims, or whoever transcribed the passage, changed 
it as being out of keeping with the now historic form of the 
name. It is possible that further changes were also made by 
the transcriber; and a theory which has some color is, that the 
object in iceeping the original manuscript out of the way may 
have been, to make it available for expansions and embellish- 
ments, using the actual record as a nucleus. 



II. 

The theme referred to in Chapter TIT. is given in full be- 
low. After the earlier portion of the present essay had been 
stereotyped, an article by Professor G. T. Packard, on Howdoin 
College, was published in " Scribner's Monthly," which con- 
tains this mention of Hawthorne : — 

"The author's college life was prophetic of the after years, when he 
so dwelt apart from the mass of men, and yet stirred so deeply the 
■world's sensibilities and delighted its fancy. His themes were written lu 
the sustained, tinished style that gives to his mature productions an in- 
imitable charm. The late Professor Newman, his instructor in rhetoric, 
was so impressed with Hawthorne's powers as a writer, that he not 
infrequently summoned the family circle to share in the enjoyment of 
reading his compositions. The recollection is very distinct of Haw- 
thorne's reluctant step and averted look, when he presented himself at 
the Professor's study, and witli girlish ditiidence sulmiitted a composition 
which no man in his class could equal When the class was grad- 
uated, llawtlionie could not be persuaded to join them in having their 
proliles cut in paper, the only class picture of the time; nor did he take 
part in the Commencement exercises. His classmates understood that he 
intended to be a writer of romance, but none anticipated las remarkaljle 
development and enduring fame. It seems strange that among his ad- 
mirers IK) one has offered him a fitting tril)ute by founding the llawtlionie 
Professorship of Knglish Literature in the college where, under the 
tutelage of the accomplished and appreciative Professor JNewinan, he was 
stimulated to cultivate his native gift." 

15 V 



338 APPENDIX. 



DE PATRIS CONSCRIPTIS ROMANORUM. 

Senatuji Ronianoriim jam primiim instiUiUini, simplicem simiil jrtc|ite 
pKPstantissiiiuini fuisse sentinnt oinues. Imperuun I'lUt, quod popiilo iiec 
avaritia nee luxuria vitiato optimum videretur. Lecti fuerunt senatores, 
non qui ambitiose potestateni cupiere, sed qui setiectute, qui sapieutia, 
qui virtute bellica vel privata uisignes, ui republica plunmum poUebant. 
Hominum consiliis virtute tarn suigulari pisditorum paruit populus 
libentei- atque senatores ut patres en il)U3 venerati. Studium illis pater- 
num adhibuere. Nulla unquam respublica, quam tuni Romana, ijec 
sanctior nee beatior I'uit; iis temporilnis etennii solum m pubUcum com- 
modum principes administrabant ; fidenique principibus populi lial)ebant. 
Sed virtute prisca reipublicte perdita, inimicitiis mutuis patres plebesque 
flagrare coeperunt, alienaque prosequi. Senatus in populum tyrannice 
saeviit, atque hosteni se monstravit potius quam custodeni reipublicie. 
Coneitatur vulgus studio libertatis repetendsc, atque per niuita secula 
patrum plebisque contentiones lustoria Romana meniorat ; patribus pri- 
stinam auctoritatem servare conatis, licentiaque plebis omnia jura sper- 
nante. Hoc niodo usque ad Punicum bellum, res se liabebant. Turn 
pericula externa discordiam doiiiesticam superabant, veipul)li«eque stu- 
dium priscam patnbus sapientiam, ])riscam populis reverentiam reddidit. 
llac ietate omnibus virtutii)us enituit Roma. Senatus, jure omnium 
consensu facto, opes suas prope ad inopiam plebis lequavit ; patrifeque 
solum amore gloria qutesita, jiecunia niluli lialiita est. Sed quum Car- 
thaginem reformidavit non diutius Roma, rediit respublica ad Aitia pri- 
stina. Patres lu.xuria solum populis prEestiterunt, et vestigia eonini 
populi secuti sunt. Senatus auctoritatem, ex illo ipso tempore, annus 
unusquisque dinuuuit, donee in tetate Augusti interitus nobilium luimi- 
liumque delectus omnino fere dignitatem conlicerunt. Augustus eqiudem 
antiquam magnificentiam patribus reddidit, sed fulgor tantuiu fuit sine 
fervore. Nunquam in repulilicasenatoribus potestates recu])eratae. Pos- 
tremum species etiam amissa est. 

Hathorne. 

THE ROMAN SENATE. 

Every one perceives that the Roman Senate, as it was originally con- 
stituted, was a no less simple than illustrious liody. It was a sovereignty 
Avhich appeared most desiraiile to a pojiulace vitiated neither by avarice 
nor luxury. Tiie senators were chosen, not from those who were ambi- 
tious of power, but those who wielded the largest iniiuence in the Re- 
public thiough wisdom and warlike valor or private virtue. The citizens 
bowed willingly to the counsels of men endowed with such singular 
worth, and venerated the senators as falliers. The latter exercised a jia- 
lernal care. ]\'o repulilic ever was holier or more blessed than tlial of 



APPENDIX. 339 

Rome at this time; for in tliose days the rnlers administered for the 
public convenience alone, and the people had faith in their rulers. But, 
the pristine virtue of the Republic lost, the fathers and the coiunionally 
began to blaze forth with mutual hostilities, and to seek after the posses- 
sions of others. The Senate vented its wrath savagely upon the jjcople, 
and showed itself rather the enemy than the guardian of the Repub- 
lic. The multitude was aroused by the desire of recovering liberty, and 
through a very long period Roman history recounts the contentious of the 
fathers and the commonalty ; the fathers attempting to preserve their old 
authority, and the license of the commons scorning every law. Affairs 
remained in this condition until the Punic War. Then foreign perils 
prevailed over domestic discord, and love of the Republic restored to 
the fathers their early wisdom, to the people their reverence. At this 
period, Rome shone with every virtue. The Senate, through the right- 
fully obtained consent of all parties, nearly equalized its power with the 
powerlessness of the commonalty ; and glory heing sought solely through 
love of the fatherland, wealth was regarded as of no account. But when 
Rome no longer dreaded Carthage, the commonwealth returned to its 
former vices. The fathers were superior to the populace only in luxury, 
and the populace followed in their footsteps. Eroin that very time, every 
year diminished the authority of the Senate, until in the age of Augustus 
the death of the nobles and the selection of insignificant men almost 
wholly destroyed its dignity. Augustus, to he sure, restored to the fa- 
thers their ancient magnilicence, but, great as was the fire (so to speak), it 
M'as without real heat. Never was the powei- of the senators recovered. 
At last even the appearance of it vanished. 



III. 

The lists of books referred to in Chapter IV. were recorded 
by different bands, or in different ways at various dates, so that 
they have not been made out quite satisfactorily. Some of the 
authors named below were taken out a great many times, but 
the niunber of the volume is given in ouly a few cases. It 
would seem, for example, that Voltaire's complete works were 
examined by Hawthorne, If we judge by his frequent application 
for some part of them, and the considerable number of volumes" 
actually mentioned. In this and in other cases, the same vol- 
ume is sometimes called for more than once. To make the 



310 



APPENDIX. 



matter clearer here, I have reduced the entries to a simple list 
of the authors read, without attempting to show how often a 
particular one was taken up. Few or none of them were i-ead 
consecutively, and the magazines placed together at the end of 
my list were taken out at short intervals throughout the differ- 
ent years. 

1830. 



(Euvres de Voltaire. 
Meiuoire de Literatiu'e. 
Liancourt. 

Qiuvres de Rousseau. 
Mass. Historical Collections. 
Trial and TriunipU of Faith. 
(Euvres de Pascal. 
Varenius' Geography. 
Mickle's Lucian. 
Dictionnaire des Sciences. 
Pamela. (Vols. I., II.) 
Life of Baxter. 
Touruefort's Voyage. 
Swift's Works. 
Hitt on Fruit-Trees. 
Bibliotlieca Americana. 
Ames's Antiquities. 
Hamilton's Works. 
Gifford's Juvenal. 



Allen's Biographical Dictionary. 

Fenelon. 

Academic Royale des Inscriptions. 

Mather's Apology. 

Vertol's History of Sweden. 

Taylor's Sermons. 

Life of Luckingtou. 

L'an 2440. 

Montague's Letters. 

English Botany. (3 vols.) 

Gay's Poems. 

Inchhald's Theatre. 

Sowerby's English Botany. 

Crahbe's Borough. 

Crabbe's Bibliographical Dictionary. 

Collection of Voyages (Ilakluyt's V). 

Lives of the Admirals. 

British Zoology. 



1831. 



Los Eruditos. 

Connoisseur. 

Camilla. 

Gifford's Persius. 

Bar tram's Travels. 

Humphrey's Works. 

Voltaire. 

Pennant's British Zoology. 

Mande\ille's Travels. 

lleiiearsal Transposed. 

Gay's Poems. 

Pompey the Little. 

Shaw's General Zoology. 



Philip's Poems. 

Sowerby's English Botany. 

Racine. 

Corneille. 

Wilkinson's Memoirs and Atlas. 

History of the Shakers. 

The Confessional. 

Calamy's Life of Baxter. 

Academie Royale des Inscripts. 

Essais de Montaigne. (Vols. I., II., 

111., TV.) 
Cadell's Journey through Italy and 

Carniola. 



APPENDIX. 



341 



CobbcfS Ride in France. 

Temple's Works. (Vols. I., II., III.) 

Asiatic Researches. 

Cochran's Tour in Siberia. 

Cliaidiii's Travels. 

Rranclt's History of the Reformation. 

Russell's Natural History. 

Aleppo. (Vol. I.) 

Answer to the Fable of the Bees. 

Han way's Travels. 

Memoirs of C. J. Fox. 

Bavle's Critical Dictionary. (Vols. 

* IT, v., VI.) 
State Trials. (Vols. I., II., IV., V., 
VI.) 



Tales of a Traveller. 

Diction nai re des Sciences. (Vol. 

XV 11.) 
Bacon's Works. (Vol. II.) 
Gordon's Tacitus. 
Coiquhoun on the Police. 
Cheyne on Health. 
Pope's Homer. (Vol. I.) 
Letters: De Maintenon. (Vol. IX.) 
Reichard's Germany, 
ffiuvres de Rousseau. 
Notes on the West Indies by Pricli- 

ard. 
CrishuU's Travels in Turkey. 



1832-33. 



Clarendon's Tracts. 
History of England. 
Prose Works of Walter Scott. (Vols. 

111., v., VI.) 
Feltham's Resolves. 
Roscoe's Sovereigns. 
Histoire de I'Academie. 
South America. 
Savages of New Zealand. 
Stackhouse's History of the Bible. 
Hryden's Poems. 
Tucker's Light of Nature. 
History of South Carolina. 
Poinsett's Notes on Mexico. 
Rruce's Travels. 
Browne's Jamaica. 
Collins's jS^w South Wales. 
Broughton's Dictionary. 
Seminole War. 
Shaw's Zoology. 
Reverie. 
Giflford's Pitt. 
Curiosities of Literature. 
Massinger. 

Literary Recollections. 
Coleridge's Aids to Reflection. 
Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats. 
Paris and Fonblanque. 



Elia. 

Gardens and Menagerie. 

Medical Jurisprudence. 

History of Paris. 

Scott's Prose Works. 

Kittell's Specimens American Po- 
etry. 

Lister's Journey. 

Annals of Salem. 

Library of Old English Prose Writ- 
ers. 

Memoirs of Canning. 

Miscellaneous Works of Scott. 

Jefferson's Writings. 

History of Andover. 

Good's Book of Nature. 

History of Haverhill. 

Madden's Travels. (Vols. I., II.) 

Riedesel's Memoirs. 

Boston Newspapers (I7."6, 1739, 
175 1, 17fi2, 1771, 1783). 

Drake's Mornings in Spring. 

Drake's Evenings in Autumn. 

Anecdotes of Bowyer. 

Gouverneur Morris. (Vols. L, II.) 

Bryan Walton's Memoirs. 

Moses Mendelssohn. 

CoUingwood. 



342 



APPENDIX. 



Felt's Annals. 

Stnitt's Sports and Pastimes. 

Sclnller. 

Mrs. Jameson. (2 vols.) 

Thatcher's Medical Biography. 

History of Plymouth. 

Crahbe's Universal Dictionary. 

Lewis's History of Lynn. 

A Year m Spain, by a Young Amer- 
ican. (Vols. I., IL) 

Croker's Boswell. 

Deane's History of Scituate. 

Diplomatic Correspondence. (Vols. 
L, IL) 

Temple's Travels. (Vol. II.) 



Puller's Holy State. 
Remarkables of Increase Mather. 
History of Portland. (Vols. I., II.) 
Practical Tourist. 
Ehnneuts of Technology. 
Heber's Life, by Taylor. 
Ductor Substantium. 
Hel)er's Travels in India. (Vols. 

1., II.) 
Byron's Works. 

Travels in Brazil and Buenos Ayres. 
History of Spain. 
Franklin's "Works. 
Meutal Cultivation. 



1835. 



Life of Gouverneur Morris. 
Hamilton's Progress of Society. 
Twiner's Sacred History. 
Encyclopsedia. 
Life of Arthur Lee. 
lyife of Sir Humphry Davy. 
Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats. 
Prior's Poems. (Vol. I.) 



Jefferson's Writings. (Vols. I., II.) 
Memoirs of the Tower of Loudon. 
History of King's Chapel. 
Memoirs of Dr. Burney. 
Hone's .Every Day Book. (Vols. I , 

IL, III ) 
Life of Livingstone. 



1836. 



Life of Hamilton. (Vol. I.) 
Debates in Parliament. (Vol. I.) 
Curiosities of Literature (Vol. I.) 
Combe on the Constitution of Man. 
Babliage on Economy of Machinery. 
Eulogies on Jefferson and Adams. 
Hone's Every Dav Book. (Vols. I., 

TIL) 
Dunlap's History of the Arts of De- 
sign. (Vols. I., 11) 
Mende's Guide to Observation of 

Kature. 
Cobbett's Cottage Economy. 
Douglas's Summary. (Vol. I.) 
Practical Tourist. "(Vols. I., II.) 
Dick on Improvement of Society. 
Bush's Life of Mohammed. 



Temple's Travels in Peru. (Vol. I.) 

Gay's Poems. 

Pliny's Natural History. 

Coleridge's Table-Talk.' 

Letters from Constantinople . (Vols. 

I., 11) 

Reynolds's Voyages. 

Adventures on Columbia River, by 
Ross Cox. 

Baine's History of Cotton Manufac- 
ture. 

History of Nantucket. 

Travels in South America. 

Miiller's Universal History. 

Antar. A Bedoueen Romance. 

Lives of the Philosophers. (Vols. 

I., no 



APPENDIX. 



343 



Pescription of Trades. 
Colmati's Visit to England. 
Liidolph's History of Ethiopia. 
Griflin's Remains. 
McCree's Life of Knox. 
Walker's Sufferings of fhe Clergy. 
Yoyage de la mer du Sud aii Kord. 
Biographia Literaria 
Tlie Stranger in America. 
Raumer's England in 1835. 



Random Recollections of tlie House 

of Lords. 
The German Student. 
Sparks's American Biography. 
Brewster's Natural Magic. 
Prior's Life of Goldsmith. 
Sparks's Washington. 
Walter Scott's Demouology and 

Witchcraft. 
Scott's Life of Bonaparte. (3 vols.) 



1837. 



Washington's Writings. 
Martineau's Miscellany. 
Wraxall's Memoirs. 
Bancroft's United States History. 
Rush, on the Human Voice. 
Drake's Indian Biography. 
Wordsworth's Poetical Works. 
Clarendon's History of the Rebel- 
lion. 



Reliques of Ancient Englisli Poetry. 

Baylie's Historical Memoirs of Plym- 
outh County. 

Life of Jefferson, hy Tucker. 

Random Recollections of the House 
of Commons. 

Specimens of American Poetry. 



1838. 



Life of Jefferson. 
Brown's Novels. 
Parr's Works. 
Select Comedies. 
Proissart's Ancient Chronology. 
Byron's Works. 
Plutarch's Lives. 

Irf)ndon Encyclopredia of Architec- 
ture. 
Gentleman's Magazine. 
Monthly Magazine. 
Monthly Review. 
European Magazine. 
Christian Examiner. 
Edinburgh M agazine. 
Annual Register. 
Quaiterly Review. 



Southern Review. 

Worcester's Magazine. 

North American Review. 

United States Service Journal. 

Court Magazine. 

Museum of Literature and Science. 

Westminster Review. 

London Monthly Magazine. 

Eclectic Review. 

Foreign Quarterly Review. 

Blackwood's Magaznie. 

Metropolitan Magazine. 

New England Magazine. 

British Critic. 

American Encyclopaedia. 

Rees's Cyclopaedia. 

Gifford's Juvenal. 



INDEX. 



X 



Addison, Joseph, 304, 314, 315. 
Ue^oi y and symbolism, 204. 

Ambitious Guest, Tlie, 154, 157. 

America, Hawthorne's sentiment 
about returning to, 266. 

American Magazine, 169. 

American Note-Books, record of 
youth in, 139, 140. 

American nurture of Hawthorne's 
genius, 161, 163. 

American quality in literature, 313, 
313. 

Andrews, Ferdinand, 135, 

Apollyon, name of cat, 171- 

Artist of the Beautiful, The, 205. 

Atmosphere, Hawthorne's suscep- 
tibility to, 253, 254. 

Autobiographies, 14. 



Balzac's method of dealing with sin, 

152. 
Bancroft, George, 181. 
Baudelaire, 314. 
Bay writers, nickname given hy 

Church Review, 215. 
Beelzebub, Hawthorne's cat, 171. 
Belief, Hawthorne's, 296. 
Bewick Company, 169. 
Biography, Hawthorne's feeling 

at)out, 14. 
Birth-mark, The, 203. 

15* 



Blithedale Romance, 72, 203; its 
relation to Brook Farm, 193 ; real 
incident applied in, 198; when 
written, 240; remarks on, 241. 

Bloody Footstep, 277- 

Boston Custom-House, 182. 

Boston Token, The, 166. 

Bowdoin College, 109; passage from 
"Faushawe" descriptive of, 109, 
110. 

Bridge, Horatio, 110 ; prognostic of, 
concerning Hawtliorne, 113, 114; 
174, 200. 

Brig Fair American, Ballad of, 54, 
55. 

Brook Farm, origin of, 184; Haw- 
thorne's aim in going to, 186; 
length of stay there, 190, 191; 
trenchant remark upon, in Blithe- 
dale, 195, 196. 

Brown, Brockden, 133. 

Buchanan, James, 265. 

Buds and Bird- Voices, 200. 

Bunyan, compared with Milton, 32; 
witli Hawtliorne, 34. 

Burroughs, Rev. Dr. Charles, note 
from, to Hawthorne, 225. 

Bryant, William Ciillen, 133. 

Celestial Railroad, The, 69, 200. 
Characters of Hawthorne, 327. 



34-6 



INDEX. 



Chi|)pings witli a Cliiscl, 145. 

Chorley^ IT. V., 17;5. 

Christmas Banquet, The, 203. 

Church Review, 206 ; attack of, on 
The Scarlet Letter, 215, 216. 

Cilley, Jonatlian, 133. 

Clarendon's History, 7i. ' 

Coleridge, S. T., 2oi. 

Conception of Character, Haw- 
thorne's method of, 196, 197- tl 

Contact of life and death, 15. 

Contradictions of critics, 17- 

Cooper, J. Fenimore, 134. !•* 

Cooper Memorial letter of Haw- 
thorne, 242. 

Coverdale, .Miles, origin of name; 
character of, how related to HaM'- 
thorne, 193, 299. 

Curtis, George William, 185-198; 
letters from Hawthorne to, 239, 
243, 244. 

Curwin Mansion, 24. 

Cushnig, Caleb, 135. 

Cnstom-Honse, prefatory chapter 
on tlie, 223 ; excitement over it 
in Salem, 224. 

Democratic Review, 199. 

Devil in Manuscript, The, 134. 

Dickens, 42, 299. 

Dixey, William, name in Seven 

Gables, 41. 
Doctor Heidegger's Experiment,153. 
Dol liver Romauce, The, 281, 282, 

283, 320. 
Drake, J. R., 315. 
Dramatic quality in Hawthorne, 

36. 
Drowne's Wooden Image, 204. 
D'Urfe, 328. 

Early Notes, discovery of, 83 ; pas- 
sages from, 84-100, 331-333. 
Earth's Holocaust, 203. 
Eccentricity in Salem, 38. 



Edinburgli Review, stricture of, 
upon Irving, 315, 316. 

Emerson's English Traits, 252. 

Eudicott and The Red Cross, 153; 
passage from, bearing on Scarlet 
Letter, 212. 

Endicotts, anecdote of, 61. 

English Note-Books, characteristics 
of, 249, 250. 

Evangeline, origin of, 178; Haw- 
thorne's review of, 178. 

Fame, in what way desirable, 137. 

Fancy's Show-Bo.x, 150, 153. 

Faust, 272, 273. 

" Fanshawe," 123, 126; ahstract of, 
127 ; passages from, 121, 129 - 132. 

Fearing, Master, and Hawtliorne, 
71, 7'^2. 

Fielding, Henry, 328. 

Fields, J. T., mistake of, 155. 

Fine Art, Hawthorne's way of look- 
ing at, 251. 

Fire worship, 200. 

First Church of Salem, 24, 156. 

First publication by Hawthorne, 
116. 

Foote, Caleb, 135. 

Fouque, 328. 

French and Italian Note-Books, 249, 
250. 

Froissart, 7^^- 

Gautier, Theophile, 314. 

Goethe, 14, 332, 333. 

Godwin, William, 108, 123. 

Goldsmith, 19. 

Goodrich, S. G., 166; employs Haw- 
thorne as editor, 169; ditliculties 
with, 171, 172. 

Grandfather's Chair, 172; publica- 
tion of, 199. 

Gray Champion, The, 153. 

! Hathorne, Elizabeth C. Manning, 



INDEX. 



347 



mother of Nathaniel ITawtliorne, 
62 ; piety of, 62 ; her inconsola- 
bieiiess at loss of her husbaud, 77- 

Hathorne, John, 51 ; judge in witch- 
craft trials, 52. 

Hathorne, Joseph, 52; Benjamin, 
53 ; Daniel, 53. 

Hathorne, Kathaniel, father of Na- 
thaniel, 62 ; death of, 60 ; Haw- 
thorne's resemblance to, 61, 62. 

Hathorne, William, 46; his perse- 
cution of Quakers, 49, 50 ; his will, 
50. 

Haunted Mind, The, 153. 

Hawthorn'e, Nathaniel, birth of, 
60 ; changes spelling of name, 60; 
birthplace of, 62 ; childhood of, 
63, 64; lameness in boyhood, 68; 
fondness for cats, 69 ; scholar- 
ship of, at college. 111 ; English 
compositions of, 112; Latin theme 
of, 112 (in full, Appendix, 336); 
readmg of, 67, 74, 164, 165 ; love 
of books, 292, 293 ; first printed 
article of, 116 ; college associa- 
tions of, 114; literary struggles 
of, 172, 173 ; pecuniary difficul- 
ties of, 200, 209; Democratic sym- 
pathies of, 183; his inability to 
distinguish tunes, 124, 125 ; social 
nature of, 158 ; error as to long 
obscurity of, 200 ; anecdotes of, 
189, 192, 288 ; value of these in 
general, 285 ; his love of solitude, 
146, 147; healthiness of, 246, 
247 ; shyness, 247 ; considerate- 
ness for others, 293 ; personal ap- 
pearance, 290; G. W. Curtis's 
reminiscence of, 289; his simpli- 
city of habits, 292 ; love of books, 
293; abstraction, 295; moral en- 
thusiasm of, characterized, 297 ; 
imsuspiciousness of, 297; intro- 
spection of, how exaggerated, 298 ; 
distaste for society, how explain- 



able, 297; in what greater than 
Irving, 301 ; ghostly atmospiiere 
of, 303 ; humor of, 306 ; Ameri- 
can quality of, 313; effect of civil 
war upon, 319; death of, 324; his 
grave, 325 ; burial, 325 ; literary 
and intellectual influence of, 330. 

■ leine, Heinrich, 330. 

rielwyse, Gervase, 51. 
illard, George S., 287- 
'offman, Charles Fenno, 180. 
' -igg's Tales, 108. 

. iolmes, Oliver Wendell, 324; letter 
from, to Hawthorne, 232, 233. 

Horace, 295. 

Hous£of_theje\^e n Gables , The, 226 ; 
Hathorne liistory, 57, 58 ; com- 
position of, 227 ; originals for the 
house, 235 ; survey of, 235 - 238. 

Ho wells, W. ])., Hawthorne's re- 
mark to, 295. 

Invisible struggles of genius, 160. 

Irving, Washington, 134; compari- 
son with Hawthorne, 301 ; humor 
of, 303 - 305 ; attitude of, in Eng- 
land, 314, 315 ; his use of native 
material, 316; liis histories, 316; 
style of, 301. 

John Ingefield's Thanksgiving, 200. 

Johnson, Samuel, 11, 74. 

Journal of an African Cruiser, 200, 

201. 
Journal of a Solitary Man, 158. 

Kingsley's Greek Eairy-Tales, 240. 

Latin Theme of Hawthorne, 112; 

in full. Appendix, 336. 
Lawrence, Lieutenant, killed off 

Marblehead, 74. 
Lenox, removal to, 226. 
Letters of Hawthorne, in boyhood, 

68, 75, 79, 81, 82, 83, 107, 108; from 



348 



INDEX. 



college, 112, 117,118,119,120; from 
Connecticut and New Hampshire, 
143, U4., 145 ; to Longfellow, 175 - 
178, 182; to Bridge, 224, 228, 
246, 266, 267 ; to Curtis, 239, 243, 
244; to Motley, 263, 264; to 
Lowell, 270, 323. 

Leutz.e, 211, 319. 

Limitations of Hawthorne, 329. 

Liverpool consulate, 248 ; reduction 
in receipts of, 264, 265; unjust 
criticism of Hawthorne in, 265. 

Longfellow, Henry W., 110, 123; 
review of Twice-Told Tales, 174, 
175 ; letter to Hawthorne, 179. 

Loring, Dr. G. B., 232. 

Lowell, James Russell, 231, 319; 
letter from, 323. 

Maine, Hawthorne's sojourn in, in 
boyhood, 79. 

Manning, Elizabeth Clarke, Haw- 
thorne's mother, 62. 

Manning's Folly, 76. 

Manning, Richard, 76. 

Manning, Robert, 62, 68,76,110,120. 

Manning, Samuel, 143. 

Manuscript sketch for Septimius, 
277 - 279. 

Marble Faun, The, 150; examina- 
tion of, 255 -560. 

Marine outrages,"lIawthorne's wish 
to redress, 267. 

Marvell, Andrew, 319. 

Maturity in Hawthorne, earliness 
of, 152. 

Maule, Thomas, 40. 

Mavpole of Merry Mount, The, 152, 
173. 

Melville, Herman, 226; private re- 
view of Seven Gables by, 230, 231. 

Michael Angelo, 11. 

Milton compared with Bunyan and 
Hawthorne, 34. 

Minister's Black Veil, The, 153, 173. 



Mitford, Miss, Letter from, to Haw- 
thorne, 229. 

Mosses from an Old Manse, 156 ; 
first issue of, 201; criticism of, 
203. 

Motley, John Lothrop, letter of, to 
Hawthorne, 261, 262. 

Mozart, 283. 

Mrs. Bullfrog, 205. 

New England civilization, 9; early 

character, 9, 10. 
Newman, Professor, 112. 
Nomenclature of fiction, 42. 
Novalis, 328. 

Oberon, 156. 

Objectivity of Hawthorne, 286. 
Old Apple-Dealer, The, 205, 262. 
Oliver, B. L., 81. 

Our Old Home, 74, 151, 254, 320, 
322. 

Packard, Professor G. T., Ill ; Ap- 
pendix, 316. 

Papers of an old Dartmoor prisoner, 
201. 

Paulding, J. K., 315. 

Peabody, Miss E. P., acquaintance 
with Hawthorne, 167, 168. 

Peabody, Miss Sophia, 181. 

Peter Parley's History, Mritten by 
Hawthorne, 171. 

Pierce, Franklin, 110, 115; Haw- 
thorne's Life of, 226, 245 ; (senti- 
ments in, touching slavery, 246 ; 
resulting abuse of Hawthorne, 
247 ;) dedication of Our Old 
Home to, 320, 321. 

Pilgrim's Progress, Hawthorne's 
reading of, 69 ; allusions to, in his 
works, 72. 

Plato, 11. 

Plymouth Colony enactment against 
adultery, foot-note, 212. 



INDEX. 



349 



Poe's critipism on Hawthorne, 206, 
207; similarities of, to Hawthorne, 
300, 307; defectiveness of, 308; 
sulj.iectivity of, 310; doubtful 
sanity of, 311 ; his ratiocination, 
310, 311; foreign influence of, 
314. 

Pope, Alexander, 67- 

Procession of Life, The, 200, 203. 

Prophetic Pictures, The, 153. 

Pseudonymes of Hawthorne, 166 
(foot-note). 

Puritan imagination, 28, 29. 

Puritans, Hawthorne's view of, 43. 

Pyncheon, Clifford, how resemhhug 
Poe, 311. 

Pynchons, complaints of the, against 
Seven Gables, 234. 

Rappaccini's Daughter, 200, 203. 
Raymond, Maine, removal to, 76. 
Ripley, George, 18a. 
Roger Malvin's Burial, 200, 203. 
Rossetti-Morris school, 314. 
Rousseau, 67. 

Salem, as a native soil, 11 ; Haw- 
thorne's sentiment for, 13 ; aspects 
of, 20, 21 ; origin of name, 27 ; 
trade, 56. 

Salem Custom-House, 2C9. 

Sand, George, 126. 

Sanity of highest genius, 311. 

Scarlet Letter, 10, 70, 203; origin 
of, 210-212; publication of, 213, 
214 ; Leutze's coincidence, 211 ; 
passage compared with Bunyan, 
73 ; theme of revenge in, 148 ; 
analysis of the romance, 218- 
231 ; as a work of art, 232, 223. 

Scotland and New England, 124. 

Scott, Sir Walter, 124; Hawthorne's 
estimate of, 136. 

Scude.ri, Madeleine de, 328. 

Sebago Lake, 76, 98, 99. 



Sense of form in Hawthorne, 205 ; 

in Poe, 313. 
Septimius Felton, 271 ; symbolism 

of, 372; origin of, 276-278. 
" Seven Tales of my Native Land," 

134. 
Shakespere, 31, 67. 
Shelley's Latin verses, 111; The 

Cenci, compared with Marble 

Faun, 259, 260. 
Sights from a Steeple, 146, 263. 
Sims, William, finder of supposed 

Early Notes, Appendix, 333. 
Sin, consciousness of, in Hawthorne, 

148, 149 ; how conducive to origi- 
nality, 149. 
Slavery, Hawthorne's sentiments 

concerning, 181, 246. 
Snow Image, 113. 
Sparhawk House, Kittery, 225. 
" Spectator," The, 101 ; extracts 

from, 101 - 107. 
Spenser, 73. 
St. Jolin's, John Hathonle's attack 

on, 52. 
Story, Joseph, 75. 

Sumner, Charles, note of, to Haw- 
thorne, 248. 
Sunday at Home, 153. 
Supernatural, Hawthorne's use of, 

329. 
Surroundings of genius assist but 

do not pi'oduce it, 80. 

Taine's Notes on England, 253. 
Tales of the Province Flouse, 152. 
Tanglewood Tales, 236. 
Term-Bill at College, 116. 
Thackeray, 314 (note), 299. 
Thomson, James, 67. 
Thoreau's Legend of the Wayside, 

244. 
Tieck, 307, 272, 328. 
Toll-Gatherer's Day, 145. 
Tragedy of isolation, 159. 



350 



INDEX. 



True Stories, 74, 173. 

Twice-Told Tales, 150, 152, 157; 
temperament in style of, 11 ; first 
collection of, 174; second, 177, 200. 

Union of the States, Hawthorne's 

feeling about, 268, 270. 
Union Street, 62. 
Upliam's " Salem Witchcraft," 39. 

Verses by Hawthorne, at college, 122. 
Virgil, 295. 

Virtuoso's Collection, 70. 
Voltaire, 11. 

Wayside, The, purchase of, 243. 
Wedding Knell, The, 157, 17.3. 
Weird, The, in Scotland and JVew 
England, 126. 



West Newton, removal to, 240. 
Whipple, Edwin, objection to remark 

of, 154 ; Hawthorne's pleasure m 

reviews written by, 234. 
Wliite, John, Rev., 27. 
White Old Maid, The, 157. 
Widowhood, sentiment of, expressed 

by Hawthorne, 78. 
Wiuthrop, John, 9. 
Witchcraft, 29, 30. 
Witch-ointment, 170. 
Witch-pins, 23. 
Wonder-Book, 226, 240. 
Worcester, Dr. J. E., 66, 68, 74. 

Young Goodman Brown, 17C, 203. 
Youth of Hawthorne, habits in, 140 

- 142 ; valuable formative results 

of, 16.3. 




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